UW-Madison's student government has found a larger-than-expected amount of reserve funds available to cover the majority of the $256,580 asked for by the state, officials said Friday.
ASM Chair Tyler Junger said he was informed by Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell within the past 48 hours that a general reserve fund that contains money from student groups would be close to covering the entire cost. Junger said university officials were not yet sure what the amount would be, but that it was large enough to cover most of the amount requested by the state.
He said ASM and university officials would have close to a month to cobble together whatever funding sources were available to comply with the requests, with the transfers due to funding decisions in the recently signed state budget.
Junger said initially ASM was considering actions like cutting the SAFEcab program, major cuts to student group budgets or cuts to ASM's internal budget. Due to the amount of reserve funds recently found available, those steps likely do not have to be taken.
The budget sought for all UW System schools to give back $23 million from their auxiliary and reserve funds to help close the large budget shortfall and help maintain financial aid for students. This combines with the estimated $56 million in cuts because of university employee furloughs over the next two years, along with other cuts, with the 2009-'10 state budget reducing the UW System's funds by $120 million overall.
The state is asking for over $2 million from UW-Madison, including over $494,000 from University Housing and $287,000 from Recreational Sports programs, according to documents obtained with the state's open records law. The reserve funds will then be used to support financial-aid programs in the state.
Other parts of the campus that will see large parts of their reserve funds taken include University Health Services losing $237,000 and the Wisconsin Union losing over $397,000, according to the documents detailing the cuts.
Check dailycardinal.com in the coming days for updates on this developing story.
