The following email is posted at the request of the Senate President


From: Peter Keyes (pkeyes@uoregon.edu)
Date: May 23, 2006 1:36:01 PM PDT
To: senate05-06@lists.uoregon.edu
Subject: Fiscal Impact Statement

Dear Senators:

This is the first (and longest) of a few emails I will be sending you today in advance of tomorrow's Senate meeting. As always, the scheduled Senate meeting time is shorter than ideal for the in-depth discussion of complex issues. My intention in this message is to lay out the context for a discussion on the fiscal impact statement for the diversity plan, so that you will be up to speed tomorrow, and we hopefully won't have to spend the whole Senate meeting explaining this one issue..

A number of faculty have raised concerns regarding the fiscal impact of the diversity plan, and this issue will certainly be raised at the meeting tomorrow. The basis for this debate is Article 5.1 of the Senate's By-Laws (available in the Senate Charter online):

Article V Fiscal Impact Statement Requirement

5.1 All motions brought before the University Senate that may have any fiscal consequences or impact must be accompanied by a fiscal impact statement at the time the motion is introduced. This statement shall note for example, cost savings, new or created costs, or a determination of cost neutral. The Senate, in its final disposition of any legislation with a possible fiscal impact is obligated to describe this fiscal information prior to the final passage of any legislation.

When I sent you the language for motion US05/06-10 on May 14th, I included the statement:

Fiscal Impact Statement: The drafters of the Plan have provided no fiscal impact statement.

This was technically correct, as there was no explicit fiscal impact statement accompanying the diversity plan, and I realized it would be hard to pull one together at 11:48 on a Sunday night. (This deadline was imposed by the Charter's requirement that all motions be circulated to the Senate 10 days before the meeting, which cleverly always falls on a Sunday.)

As this issue was discussed over the next few days, by the Senate Executive Committee and other faculty, we realized that a more helpful elucidation of the potential fiscal impact of the diversity plan could be found in the body of the plan: from the "Structure of the Diversity Plan – Resources” section of the Diversity Plan:

Stipulations about specific allocations of University resources are beyond the scope of this the Diversity Plan. Although many of the strategic directions contained in the Diversity Plan will not require financial resources, success of some aspects of the Diversity Plan will depend both on finding new resources and on the creative and strategic reallocation of existing resources. Given the financial constraints on all University resources, reallocations of existing resources should be managed carefully to accomplish as much as possible, as cost-effectively as possible. The Diversity Plan identifies areas in which allocation of additional financial resources may be particularly useful, but the Diversity Plan does not determine the priority of these initiatives relative to other areas of critical financial need at the University. The University should make it a high priority to find new resources to commit to the strategic directions set forth in the Diversity Plan. OIED will review existing resources devoted to diversity matters to determine whether those resources are being used in the most effective way possible. The Provost will evaluate any funding for sufficiency and effectiveness. The Plan will be implemented with the full financial transparency appropriate to a public university.

The strategic directions ultimately contained in the Diversity Plan will not be forwarded as unfunded mandates to departments or units. Although the Diversity Plan identifies strategic directions to be carried out by academic and nonacademic units, and although some initiatives will be cost-neutral, the Diversity Plan does not assume that units will be asked to reach new goals with existing resources

This language was then posted on the Senate webpage with the language of the motion.

Let me summarize the main arguments I have heard in the past week on this issue:

  • 1. "According to the Senate charter, any motion must have a fiscal impact statement."


    • This is technically not true - only those motions that may have any fiscal consequences or impact must be accompanied by a fiscal impact statement (although we may be getting into a Clintonian parsing of what "may" means.) I recently spent some time reviewing all motions considered by the Senate in the past five years, in the hope that this would throw some light on the discussion. The research determined :
    41 motions on the Senate docket
    36 of which were passed by the Senate.
    6 of these 36 had explicit fiscal impact statements.
    30 of these 36 did not, and were implicitly deemed to not have any fiscal impact.
    22 of these 30, I estimate would have had negligible or minimal impact - clarifying procedures and policies, making committee assignments, calling for Senate hearings, etc. More on the other 8 later.

  • 2. "the motion is simply to adopt "the plan."The plan calls for the university to commit itself to certain principles, which have no direct or known financial impact, AND to plan to implement those principles through additional planning in individual units. This additional planning is cost neutral--clearly this is something we can do without additional cost. These strategic plans and their coordination into larger university diversity efforts are likely to have some financial impact, which is currently unknown and unknowable. But that's not what we're considering directly in this motion, right?


    • The argument here is that there are no costs directly associated with adopting this diversity plan. It is argued that further planning may lead to real financial impacts, but that is not certain, nor can the financial impacts be assessed with any accuracy at this point, as the scope of future actions is completely undefined.

    Let me return to the 8 motions passed by the Senate, which had no explicit fiscal impact statement, but clearly had the potential to go beyond negligible or minimal costs. They are:

    1. US03/04 rejecting the designation of Howe Field as the site for a new arena
    2. US05/06 rejecting the current process for selling Westmoreland and calling for a restart of the process.


      3. These were not motions that the Senate really initiated. They were reactions to proposals with high fiscal impact made by the administration (which itself had provided no detailed fiscal impact statement for these proposed actions). Although the senate actions in both cases could be construed as having potentially high fiscal impact - thwarting a $150 million plus project and annoying donors in one case, losing the University $18 million in capital in the other - we stated the Senate's consensus (unanimous) on both of these projects without a fiscal impact statement. In some ways, the Diversity Plan motion is similar to these two - the administration puts forward an initiative with no stated fiscal impact, and the Senate reacts to it, in those cases negatively, in this case, we don't know yet.

    3. US01/02 supporting the OPEU in their contract negotiations, and arguing for a living wage If followed, this clearly would have a huge fiscal impact, which couldn't be precisely stated up front, but the senate thought it important to take a stand. should be noted that this motion was not legislative (we weren't trying to give the staff a raise), but simply expressing support.
    4. US03/04-10 - Clarifying processes for convening a meeting of the Assembly This was passed without a fiscal impact statement. However US05/06-1, which further expanded upon this issue, did eventually spell out these costs, after being stalled for quite a while by this requirement.
    5. US03/04 Changing group-satisfying course requirements from 16 to 15 credits
    6. US03/04 Clarifying processes the University should follow in responding to law enforcement subpoenas


      7. Both of these could have no fiscal impact, or they could have a large fiscal impact. There were simply too many unknown variables for the first, and the second would be completely dependent upon whether other government agencies actually issued subpoenas to the University, whether we found them to be inadequate, and whether they then sued us.

    7. US03/04-3 Joining the Council on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA)
    8. US04/05-5 Endorsing the COIA document on Best Practices


      9. Neither of these motions had any direct fiscal impact (beyond sending a rep to some meetings.) The motion on the best practices stated "The Academic Integrity document does not provide specific rules that each campus must follow". However, it could be argued that, in the long run, the UO would examine some of these best practices and decide to apply them, which could have a fiscal impact. The original motions may not have increased costs, but they may have set us on a path which would lead to a definite fiscal impact. These motions may be relevant to the matter at hand. We endorsed a document prepared by others, even thought we couldn't ascertain the potential long term costs. (And as Keynes said, in the long term we are all dead.) We directed the IAC to examine the document and think about which practices we might want to implement at some point in the future.

  • 3. consider the fiscal impact of this to be of the utmost importance. It is absurd to the point of farce that the "Plan" refuses even to consider fiscal impacts. If the UO Senate accepts this "Plan" without discussing numbers for costs and the impacts, it will certainly demolish its credibility in many eyes."


    • This argument is that the provisions of the Plan rise well above the threshold established by "may have any fiscal consequences or impact"; although there are no specific actions mandated in the plan which have precisely definable costs, the Plan sets a direction which for which it is inconceivable that there will be no additional costs.

    The language from the plan which has been included as a fiscal impact statement states that: The strategic directions ultimately contained in the Diversity Plan will not be forwarded as unfunded mandates to departments or units; therefore, there should be no direct fiscal impact at the department budget level. However, it also states: success of some aspects of the Diversity Plan will depend both on finding new resources and on the creative and strategic reallocation of existing resources; from which we can infer that at the central administrative level, decisions will be made on whether to prioritize funding for initiatives developed in unit-level diversity plans, or for other possible uses for those additional funds.

    How this will all play out at the Senate meeting

    It seems likely that as soon as the motion on the diversity plan is introduced, a "point of order" will be raised, stating that we cannot consider the motion, as our consideration without an adequate fiscal impact statement would violate Article 5.1 of the Charter. Quoting Senate Parliamentarian Paul Simonds:

    "When a member thinks the rules of the assembly are being violated, he can make a ' point of order' or 'raise a question of order' thereby calling upon the chair for a ruling and an enforcement of the regular rules" Article 23 This takes precedence over any pending question and must be addressed before continuing.

    At this point, the Senate President would rule on whether the motion would be violate the charter.

    If the ruling is unacceptable to the raiser of the question of order, it may be appealed to the body by two members of the body or by one member making the appeal and another seconding it. Article 24

    Assuming we reach this point, the Senate would vote that either

  • a) the charter would indeed be violated, so we couldn't consider the original motion, or
  • B) that the charter would not be violated, so debate on the original motion could proceed.


    • In the first case, I think we're done with the diversity plan for the day and can move on to any other business, unless someone makes a motion to suspend the normal rules and then ventures a new motion.

    In the second case, even though the point of order had been rejected, and debate on the diversity plan could continue, the fiscal impact of the diversity plan would still be a valid point for discussion, and a possible reason to vote against the diversity plan; that is, just because the fiscal impact statement isn't a justification for rejecting any consideration of the diversity plan does not imply that that the Senate has definitively stated that all questions of fiscal impact have necessarily been adequately addressed.

    Is this clear to everyone? If it's completely clear to you, please let me know, and I will put your name down on a list of possible future Senate Parliamentarians.

    I have tried to be as evenhanded as I can on this matter, and I apologize if anyone thinks I have inadequately laid out their arguments. My primary concern in all of this has been the correctness and fairness of the process. I am concerned that if we get bogged down in too many confusing technicalities tomorrow, we may not be able to proceed to any substantive debate on the main subject, and so my intent in this message (as well as more to come today) has been to provide the Senators with backgorund which can be considered in advance, so we may move forward expeditiously tomorrow.

    Regards

    Peter
    Peter A. Keyes
    Associate Professor
    Department of Architecture
    President
    University Senate
    University of Oregon
    541.346.3640
    pkeyes@uoregon.edu
    http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~pkeyes

    Web page spun on 22 May 2006 by Peter B Gilkey 202 Deady Hall, Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, Eugene OR 97403-1222, U.S.A. Phone 1-541-346-4717 Email:peter.gilkey.cc.67@aya.yale.edu of Deady Spider Enterprises