ZOMG! The University of Wisconsin System Is Working!

[Scuba]

http://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2013/04/zomg-university-of-wisconsin-system-is.html

It was reported that the University of Wisconsin system had a surplus of one billion dollars. But then when one takes out the amount of money that has already been earmarked for specific projects, that total fell to $648 million. Of that money, over $400 million has also been committed, leaving the actual "surplus" to be $207 million.

This greatly reduced number, which has been deemed normal by an independent accounting expert, was still enough to send the usual suspects into a tizzy and an undie bundling apoplexy:

State Representative Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), Chairman of the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee, is calling for the firing of President Reilly in response to the discovery of the surplus. Nass calls the newly-discovered money a “betrayal of public trust.”Nass calls Reilly a “fraud,” saying, “At the same time the legislature is trying to hold down tuition, he’s traveling around the state bashing legislators about how cuts to the UW System will destroy it. He used very harsh language while doing that. At the same time, he’s sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in tuition money taken from students.”

But the Republicans really need to shut their hypocritical pie holes until they can explain why WEDC still exists even though they lost track of tens of millions of dollars. Then they can also explain what happened to the hundreds of millions of dollars that were supposed to go to job creation yet created no jobs. All the Republican's selective outrage is about is to give them an excuse to raid the funding of the university system and divert it to their wealthy campaign contributors. After all, the road builders, ALEC and the Kochs didn't spend all that money on their elections for their good looks.

[Viking12]

1. Direct link to the independent review story

Last edited Tue Apr 30, 2013, 07:41 AM - Edit history (1)

Accounting Policy at the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The organization known as NACUBO represents about 2,200 colleges and universities nationwide. About half are public institutions.

Menditto says she regularly analyzes universities' financial statements. She looked at the UW's statements before commenting on this story.

“Nothing struck me as unusual compared to other systems or public institutions operating statements that I review.”

A memo last week from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found the UW had reserves of $648 million. But the memo also stated that the university was already committed to spending more than $400 million of that, leaving $207 million in reserves. Menditto says that's the number to focus on: “To me that's one month of an operating budget, as defined by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.”

http://news.wpr.org/post/accounting-expert-uw-surplus-nothing-unusual

[Scuba]

2. Thanks Viking12