UPDATED: April 29, 2016 at 12:42 p.m.

Syracuse University’s director of budget and planning denies that the budget office failed to provide necessary information to a University Senate committee charged with looking at the university’s finances.

Gwenn Judge said she met with the Senate Budget Committee at several points throughout the semester, giving them reports, explanations, as well as follow-up reports on any information committee members requested. Judge reports to Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Lou Marcoccia, and is charged with reviewing the budgets of all of SU’s units — this includes schools and colleges, but also auxiliary units such as SU Health Services.

In an interview with The Daily Orange, Judge also provided insight into how the university might fund the Academic Strategic Plan and other Fast Forward initiatives.

Judge said she would attend the Budget Committee’s weekly meetings, where she’d help committee members try to understand the budget.

“I feel that we really delivered everything that they asked for this year,” Judge said. “Granted, they could’ve requested more information, but the Agenda Committee had assigned to them three or four topics they really wanted them to address specifically.”

This year, the Agenda Committee told the Budget Committee to report on the budget of the Academic Strategic Plan implementation, access to Responsibility Center Management budget information and SU Athletics’ and the NCAA sanctions.

A typical budget report that committee members might receive gives a macro look at SU’s entire budget and then shows a summary of individual units. Senators have complained that these budget summaries don’t show detailed information, but just a unit’s ins and outs — or revenue and expenses.

Judge said she tried to give committee members more specific information this year, such as indirect cost pools. Indirect cost pools can include things like administrative or personnel costs of a certain unit.

Former Senate Agenda Committee Chair Bruce Carter also said the Budget Committee was frustrated because several meetings with senior administrators about the budget were cancelled throughout the semester. One meeting with Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala was cancelled three times, Carter said in an interview after Wednesday’s senate meeting.

“We’ve sent them written questions to which they don’t respond and they cancel at the last minute,” Carter said. “Pete Sala was supposed to come to a budget committee meeting. He went to one of the Final Four games. Was it more important for him to attend a Final Four game than to attend a senate budget committee meeting?”

Sala said he didn’t travel to either of the Final Four games. He added that he couldn’t make the budget meeting because he had to help coordinate travel and logistics for the men’s and women’s basketball teams as they headed to the games.

Judge said Sala will be attending the Budget Committee’s last meeting of the semester next week. Sometimes, when a speaker can’t attend due to work conflicts it’s interpreted as refusing to give information, she said. Often, such as the case with Sala, she said there was simply a scheduling conflict.

“He’s a sincere guy. If he couldn’t make it, he couldn’t make it,” Judge said.

Wednesday’s senate meeting also dealt with concerns about how the Academic Strategic Plan would be funded. Judge offered some explanation on Budget Committee Chair Dawit Negussey’s idea to draw funding from schools and colleges initiative-funded subvention pools.

For every dollar of taxable revenue that a school or college collects, a participation tax is drawn from it and entered into a subvention pool. Schools and colleges are awarded initiative funds from a subvention pool, some of which can be used to help pay for initiatives.

“That would be a reasonable mechanism to use to provide funding to schools and colleges for this,” Judge said. “But we have to carve out an amount for that.”

In effect, Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs, said those funds would already go to initiatives anyway, so things like the Academic Strategic Plan would be relatively the same cause.

“Those are monies they would’ve launched in their own schools and colleges,” Quinn said. “I would say that anybody who’s going to fund it would want to anyway.”

But for some senators, the issue isn’t providing the money, but making sure the money is being used to fund worthwhile projects. At Wednesday’s senate meeting, political science professor Margaret Susan Thompson said a brand new promenade on University Place would lead to a library that’s consistently ranked No. 80 or lower on national research library rankings.

Judge said the academic strategic planning implementation process will involve meetings from deans and schools and colleges to help determine what the priorities are.

The budget for the Academic Strategic Plan and other Fast Forward initiatives is far from being concrete, Judge said. Once the new provost, Michele Wheatly, is in place, she’ll discuss what her priorities are and then conversations will go from there.

“She’ll have conversations with the deans and all these committees who worked on the strategic plan,” Judge said. “And from that point on, we’ll define what the need is and then figure out a funding program.”

SU’s budget for the 2017 fiscal year will be discussed, and likely approved, at the next Board of Trustees meeting scheduled during commencement weekend. Quinn said that meeting is always scheduled during that weekend.

But Judge assured that SU’s budget planning is a living process that occurs all year.

“We engage in budget planning continually,” Judge said. “We’re always working and updating our budget.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the fiscal year for which SU’s budget will be discussed was misstated. The fiscal year is 2017. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on April 28, 2016 at 2:58 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu