Browning

PENDLETON — Budget negotiations at Blue Mountain Community College broke down Thursday, May 20, between the faculty association and administration, and each side is blaming the other.

BMCC President Mark Browning is proposing a budget that cuts a number of faculty positions and programs, while the faculty association contends there are other ways to meet the bottom line.

“We came very close to reaching an agreement, but the college was unwilling to budge on a minimum of two layoffs,” Pete Hernberg, Blue Mountain Faculty Association president, said in a statement. “When we asked the college to consider giving up some of its budget increases to preserve educational offerings, they refused to consider or discuss the matter.”

Browning said it was the faculty union that walked away from the negotiating table.

“I was quite surprised and disappointed,” he said. “We were close. Very close. And while what was being considered did not pencil out as robustly as the union claimed, I was willing to keep going in the spirit of getting something done. Then it took a wild turn, (as) they physically pushed back from the table and said they were done.”

Hernberg stated the association offered a proposal to meet the budget without laying off members, but the administration insisted on at least two layoffs.

An administration team met the morning of May 21 to go through everything and look at it yet again, Browning reported, and decided to take a couple of the faculty union ideas to see what it could do with them. The team plans to present its proposal to the full budget committee at its meeting May 25 at 5 p.m., a week before the college’s board of education meets.

Before the meeting, Browning said the administration was open to counteroffers from the faculty association in ongoing negotiations over cutting staff positions.

“I’ve been on record for some time as open to looking at alternatives,” he said. “(The administration) has been meeting with the faculty association and working on possible changes. We’ll consider any proposal other than ‘just don’t do it.’ We have to fill that (budget) gap.”

Hernberg said the faculty association met repeatedly with the administration and made a proposal that would have preserved the college’s educational offerings while providing significant savings to the budget.

Getting into the numbers

The association’s proposal included a faculty salary freeze for the coming year, despite inflation running over 8%, according to Hernberg’s statement. It also offered giving up paid faculty professional development, for a savings of about $250,000, and reducing faculty overload pay by $100,000 to $200,000. Finally, four full-time faculty members would take early retirement, which, with the internal transfer of a fifth member, would total $450,000 in savings.

In return for these concessions, the association asked the college only to retract its plan to layoff faculty.

The association asked the college to consider giving up some of its budget increases to preserve educational offerings, but, according to Hernberg, BMCC administration refused to discuss the matter.

Those budget increases included $100,000 in travel expenses, $165,000 in supplies and $258,000 in repairs and maintenance, according to Hernberg’s statement. The administration also is proposing an increase of $116,000 in equipment and furniture, $100,000 in professional services and $265,000 to hire two new administrators.

“Unfortunately, the college was unwilling even to discuss these unnecessary increases to the budget,” according to Hernberg’s statement. “Nor could they explain why faculty must be laid off to make way for higher travel expenditures or more consultants and administrators. We could not accept arbitrary layoffs because we know BMCC’s mission is to educate its students.”

Browning pointed out that some of the proposals the faculty union would not accept had been their ideas in the first place, such as the salary freeze they volunteered.

“Freezing salaries for one year doesn’t solve our budget shortfall,” Browning said, and offering incentives for early retirements for teachers would require doing so for the other two classes of employees as well, which would cost the college more money.

Browning defends increases

Some of the apparent budget item increases aren’t real, while others are needed, Browning commented. For instance, the apparent athletics budget increase isn’t real, but an accounting change, switching the director’s pay into that department from another item.

He also said the two new administration positions are vital jobs the prior budgets had unwisely eliminated. The marketing and communication position is needed to attract more students, he said.

“How are we going to get more students,” Browning asked, “without letting them know what we have to offer?”

The other position is for a data analyst, and the goods and services line item is for new computers for an information system, which faculty themselves complain is horrible, according to Browning.

“They can’t have it both ways,” he said.

The travel budget is an increase over 2021, but that was an unusually low mileage year due to pandemic restrictions, Browning said. And as with instruction, professional development sessions are better in person.

Both sides say it’s about the community

“I’m proud of the service we provide to our communities,” Browning concluded. “We’ve worked hard to reduce layoffs from 10 to (fewer), but with declining enrollment, we just can’t keep the same number of teachers.”

“We know that students, parents, alumni, taxpayers and community members rely on BMCC to provide an education that we can all be proud of,” Hernberg continued in his statement. “We believe that we have made every effort to reach an agreement with the college administration and we have no choice but to resume our campaign of public advocacy.”

Hernberg also asked for supporters to join faculty at the June 1 board meeting. The association plans to gather at BMCC’s Pendleton campus at 4:30 p.m. that day.