ANNOUNCEMENTS

GET IN GEAR: HELP PLAN OUR YEAR!

During the next two chapter meetings – tomorrow Friday at 12 noon and April 20 at 12 noon, both in EDU150 on USF Tampa – we will be making plans for the summer: like many other parts of academia, summer is a time to prepare for the next academic year. There is a lot to do: we need grievance officers, we will be bargaining the next contract, and of course there will be another legislative session next spring. Everyone, members and non-members, are invited to come join us and join the discussion. There will be sandwiches, chips, and soda pop.

CONTRIBUTE TO UFF PAC!

UFF needs your help to fight for you in Tallahassee. We need to help reasonable candidates get elected this fall, and we need to build relationships with legislators we will be dealing with next spring. Thanks to the U. S. Supreme Court, that means campaign contributions. But DUES MONEY DOES NOT GO TOWARDS CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS. So the UFF Political Action Committee needs donations! Download, fill in, and mail the PAC paycheck deduction form to contribute a few dollars out of each paycheck towards the PAC fund. We need all the pull in the legislature that we can get.

JOIN UFF TODAY!

Download, fill in, and mail the membership form. Benefits of membership include the right to run and vote in UFF chapter and statewide elections; representation in grievances (UFF cannot represent a non-member in a grievance or future litigation); greater opportunities for influencing the bargaining agenda; special deals in insurance, travel, legal advice, and other packages provided by our affiliates; free insurance coverage for job-related liability; and the knowledge you are supporting education in Florida. And if you join now, you will get a $ 100 rebate dues rebate after a term. Come and join the movement.

IN THIS ISSUE

GETTING READY FOR NEXT YEAR. The UFF USF Chapter works on an April-to-April calendar, partly because much of our constituency works on a similar calendar. We have just elected the chapter leadership for the coming year, and now is the time to start making plans.

• Election Returns. While all elected officers were re-elected, there was a lot of turnover among representatives. For more, see below.
• Aftershocks. Governor Scott still hasn’t signed or vetoed all the legislation passed during the last session; he is allegedly thinking them over while testing the waters. The reviews of the higher education budget are harsh. From New York, Moody's weighs in. For more, see below.

ARTICLES

ELECTION RETURNS

The union is a democracy, and we just had elections. All UFF USF employees who were members by March 10 were eligible to run and to vote. The results of this year's election are posted at our web=page of union people, which is the place to go if you want to contact UFF or one of its officers or representatives. Here is an overview:

• The elected officers. President Paul Terry, Vice President Sonia Wohlmuth, Treasurer Art Shapiro, and Secretary Greg McColm ran without opposition and were re-elected.
• UFF Senators. Because of the new members recruited in spring 2012, USF was allocated six more senate seats, bringing us up to 23. Of the seventeen incumbents, nine were re-elected, so fourteen of the UFF senators are new: any union member may run, and these were the members who ran. Interestingly, of the 23 senators, twelve are from USF Polytechnic, one is from USF St. Petersburg, one is from USF Sarasota / Manatee, and nine are from USF Tampa. This may be a reflection of the interest in UFF at USF Polytechnic.
• FEA Delegates. The UFF USF Chapter maxed out its FEA delegation at seven delegates. Four of the incumbents were re-elected, so we have three new members. These are the delegates who will be attending the fall FEA meeting: the FEA offices of president, vice president, and secretary / treasurer are up for election, and will be elected by the delegates.

AFTERSHOCKS

Newspaper editorials were largely negative after the Florida State University System was cut $ 300 million. One of the most telling articles may have been in an old New York newspaper that specializes in the municipal bond market. On March 22, The Bond Buyer reported that Florida Lawmakers Tap University Reserves, which was, according to Moody's Investors Service, "a clear credit negative."

Moody's analyst Dennis Gephardt told The Bond Buyer that "This legislation effectively punishes those universities that built reserves and we view the reduction of these reserves as credit negative." The Bond Buyer qualified its report by saying that "general reserves typically are not used to secure debt" and reported that "Moody's noted that reserves do not include assets ...." Then the article took a close look at Florida State University, whose reserves were cut 24 % while it has $ 380 million in outstanding debt – Moody’s currently rates FSU's bonds at Aa2. Evidently, reserves are worthy of notice when considering investments. Anyway, Aa2 reflects a "stable outlook" on FSU's debt.

Perhaps stable at the moment. Much of the article concerns a report posted by the Board of Governors on Historical Trends in University System Base Operating Funds. Because of cuts in state funding, tuition and fees rose from a quarter of Educational & General (E & G) funding during 2002 – 2003 to about half last year. Meanwhile, enrollment has increased 24 %. To make up the difference, universities have fiddled with enrollment, instituted hiring freezes while hiring adjuncts (or, more recently, various kinds of lesser-paid and less secure instructors), and fiddled with operational units (including outsourcing).

Meanwhile, State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan continues to publicize building and maintenance funding. Universities rely on Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) for this, and The Bond Buyer estimates that the system requires $ 200 to $ 400 million a year. The legislature allocated less than $ 10 million this year.

The old-fashioned view – which was once called “conservative” – is that one gets what one pays for. While no one wants to pay taxes, an election year is the time to make it clear that we are making choices, and pretending that we aren't making choices (by pretending that money labeled "fraud" and "waste" freely floats in the breeze) simply enables us to make choices unconsciously and without accountability. By the time the damage is apparent, choices have been made. We have an educational job ahead of us.

Anyone interested in educating Florida about choices is invited to our next Chapter Meeting, tomorrow Friday at 12 noon in EDU150 on USF Tampa.

LOGISTICS

Next Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, 12 noon, in EDU150 on USF Tampa.

• Click here for the standing agenda
• Click here for the minutes of the previous meeting.

Membership: Everyone in the UFF USF System Bargaining unit is eligible for UFF membership: to join, simply fill out and send in the membership form.

NOTE: The USF-UFF Chapter website is http://www.uff.ourusf.org, and our e-mail address is uff@ourusf.org.

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