UW System President Kevin Reilly told Sunday’s “UpFront with Mike Gousha” he plans to propose a new policy related to cash reserves in the wake of uproar over the system holding $1 billion in reserves while it sought another tuition increase.
The uproar has led some legislators to demand his resignation, but Reilly said he had no plans to do so.
The system president instead called for a civil debate over the appropriate levels of reserves.
“I think we ought to conduct a debate over what level of reserves we should have in a civil manner,” Reilly told the program, produced with WisPolitics.com. “I think that’s what the people of Wisconsin expect us to do. That’s what I’ve done; that’s what I will continue to do.”
Reilly said he intends to meet with legislators, Gov. Scott Walker and others to discuss the issue before submitting his plan for what level of reserves the system will hold and actions it should take if it exceeds that limit or fails to have enough.
Reilly said the system’s reserves account for 25 percent of its operating budget and are enough to run the system for 90 days. He said such reserves are necessary due to the volatile nature of private and state funding.
“[It’s] very much in the window of our peer universities around the country,” Reilly said. “We’re a little bit on the low side.”
Meanwhile Walker says he’ll ask lawmakers for a two-year UW System tuition freeze “at a minimum.”
Walker is expected to detail this week what changes he wants to the UW budget following the revelation that the system has hundreds of millions of dollars in reserve.
Aside from calls for a tuition freeze, some legislators are calling for the elimination of the governor’s proposed $181 million increase in state aid to the system.
Reilly said the system is preparing for those possibilities. But he warned they could lead to a slowdown in progress on major projects at UW-Milwaukee and elsewhere.
“A lot of these monies are committed; there’s no slush fund here,” Reilly said. “These are largely committed dollars for planned operations to keep the quality of the university high and for new initiatives that relate, many of them, to economic development.”
