Dear Colleagues,

Last Friday, WWU Budget Director Faye Gallant wrote to the campus with an update on Governor Inslee’s budget proposal, which was released on Thursday.  We appreciate Director Gallant’s swift attempt to keep the Western community informed about the governor’s proposal, but we write to provide what we feel is necessary perspective and context. 

As Director Gallant points out, the governor’s proposal provides new funding for new initiatives, including Ethnic Studies and all of Western’s capital projects.  These new investments are more than negated by the fact that the Governor’s proposal also includes permanent cuts to the State of Washington’s higher education base budget for faculty and staff compensation and temporary cuts in the form of proposed faculty and staff furloughs.    

These cuts are unnecessary and unacceptable and the United Faculty of Western Washington, along with a wide range of higher education advocates, are already working hard to ensure that they do not become part of the final state budget.

Director Gallant’s message makes it clear that the Governor’s proposed budget is just the beginning of the state budget process.  But her message also leaves the impression that we play no role in this process, that we are passive recipients of “information points” and vague “budget processes.”  We want to reassure all faculty and staff that we will be working hard with strong advocates across the state to ensure that the Governor’s mistakes get fixed in the final budget.

The proposed cuts to higher education were a hasty, last minute addition to the Governor’s proposal that no higher education advocate expected.  The reaction of higher education advocates across the state, including Western and all the other 4-year colleges, the United Faculty of Washington State, our affiliates WEA and AFT Washington, other faculty and staff unions, the Washington Business Roundtable, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges, and the College Promise Coalition was immediate and strongly negative.  Together with these allies, we have already begun speaking to legislators and legislative leadership, all of whom have shown no interest in the cuts the Governor is proposing.  They recognize that the state’s revenue picture has been steadily improving and that higher education is essential to the state’s recovery from the pandemic.  In a recent poll conducted by the College Promise Coalition, 70% of Washington voters said that higher education should not be cut.  We are confident that we will bring the legislature and ultimately the Governor to see the wisdom of that majority of voters. 

If you would like more information and updates, go to this links to join the College Promise Coalition: https://www.wwuadvocates.org

We would also like to address the unnecessary anxiety created by the rest of Director Gallant’s message.  We continue to strongly disagree with the administration’s repeated use of the term “structural deficit” to describe Western’s financial picture.  A structural deficit would be a situation where the institution has debts that it cannot pay with its existing revenues, which would lead to insolvency.  All of Western’s audited annual financial reports and audited reports to Washington’s Office of Financial Management make it very clear that Western is not and has never been in this position.  Overall, Western is a financially healthy institution and describing budget choices as a structural deficit is unnecessary and unhelpful.  Any discussion of the budget should begin with a focus on Western’s structural assets—the faculty and staff who deliver Western’s academic mission.    

Our reservations about the administration’s description of Western’s finances parallel our concerns about the Budget Strategy Analysis Group, the ad hoc budget review process that Director Gallant mentions.  This process has been created unilaterally by the administration, and while we would welcome a full review of Western’s budget that included the entire Western community, this process does not do that.  It operates outside of shared governance, collects ideas in a vacuum, reviews those ideas in secret, and presents a very narrow and constrained set of choices to a committee dominated by administrators.  We feel certain this will lead to predetermined conclusions justified by a deliberately restrictive process that has not come close to considering all of the possibilities.  We will be communicating more with faculty and staff about Western’s budget in Winter quarter.

Finally, we want to publicly recognize the incredibly hard work that Western’s faculty and staff have done to serve our students during this very difficult time.  And we pledge that we will recognize that work not just with words, but with continued action to protect our work and our working conditions, which are ultimately our students’ learning conditions. 

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.   

Blanca Aranda Gómez García, At-large representative, United Faculty of Western Washington (UFWW)

Josh Cerretti, At-Large Representative, UFWW

Kristen Drickey, At-Large Representative, UFWW

Vicki Hsueh, Vice-President, UFWW

Nabil Kamel, Director of Communications, UFWW

Ricardo López-Pedreros , President, UFWW

Bill Lyne, President United Faculty of Washington State (UFW)

Lysa Rivera, Chief Steward, UFWW

Matt Roelofs, Chair Bargaining Team, UFWW

Mark Springer, Treasurer, UFWW

Theresa Warburton, At-Large Representative, UFWW.

Jeff Young, Faculty Senate President, WWU

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