University Senate
BUDGET REVIEW COMMITTEE
ANNUAL REPORT, 2005-06
This report summarizes the
activities of the BR committee for the 2005-06 academic year. This year,
our committee continued its focus on the dual issues of substantive budget
policy and governance. We again met this year with most of the major
university administration officials with significant budgetary oversight,
including Senior Executive Vice President Robert Kasdin,
Executive Vice President for Finance Albert Horvath, Chief Financial Officer
and Vice President for Budget and Finance for Health Sciences Alan Dzija, Vice President for University Budget and Financial
Planning Scott Norum, Vice President for Development
and Alumni Relations Susan Feagin, and Vice President
for Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks. Additionally, as part of our
ongoing effort to strengthen our committee's links with the University
Trustees, we also met with the chair of the Trustees' Finance Committee, Savio Tung.
In these conversations, we continued to review major issues relating to the
University's overall financial picture, including campus expansion and
budgetary challenges at Health Sciences and at Arts and Sciences. We also
this year identified a new issue that we believe will be of rising importance
in the future: namely the need for fuller contingency planning with regard to
possible reductions in government support for scientific research. Under current
With regard to one other issue we have been following for the past few years,
we are happy to report that the question of the costs presented by University support
of the Columbia School for Children seems to have been adequately addressed,
and this issue is no longer on our current list of priorities. Given the
significance of the School for Children in terms of budget, faculty affairs,
and community relations, however, we will continue to monitor the situation.
With regard to issues of governance, we made progress in understanding the
timing of the process through which the University constructs its budget, and
were able to participate in conversations with budgetary officials at an
earlier stage than in past years, before as many critical decisions had been
made. We also made progress in developing communication channels with the
University Trustees, and in strengthening relationships with administration officials.
We have identified one governance issue, however, that we believe merits
additional attention in future years: administration policy with regard to the
availability of budgetary information. As part of its internal
reorganization, and in connection with the associated reorganization of the
governance structures of the University Trustees, the administration has opted
to reduce the level of detail provided in public budgetary documents, particularly
with regard to the breakdown of funding flows affecting individual schools and
units. In addition, portions of the administration's budget analysis that
previously were shared with the committee and the larger university community
are now being restricted in circulation to the Trustees. We appreciate
the value of these adjustments in information policy with regard to open and
candid discussion and with regard to enhanced Trustee oversight of budgetary
affairs. At the same time, it is important that appropriate information
be provided to the Senate and its committees, so that we can continue to
discharge our role in offering feedback on priorities and on best practices of
financial governance. As we have indicated, our committee will continue
to follow this issue in the upcoming academic year.
In conclusion, the committee would like to thank all of the above officials,
and especially Albert Horvath, Scott Norum, and Alan Dzija, for their cooperation and candor in sharing their
insights on the budget with us and in helping us more effectively to discharge
our mandate under the By-Laws of the University Senate.
For the committee,
Avery W. Katz, Chair