Present were President Marie Vitulli, Vice-President Steve Gibbons (WOU), Secretary-Treasurer Kemble Yates (SOU), Tim Thompson (OIT), Greg Monahan (EOU), Jacqueline Arante (PSU), Jonathon Uto (PSU), and Bob Becker (OSU).   Also present:  Mark Nelson and Karen Mainzer.

President Marie Vitulli called the meeting to order at 9:00 AM. 

The minutes of our June meeting were approved.

Campus reports—

UO (MV)

• Lots of concern about the basketball arena funding issue.
• Accreditation report highlighted need for assessment.
• Marie is chairing the Senate budget committee; wants to do a detailed focus on faculty salaries.
• UO has had its Carnegie status downgraded from “very high research university” to “high research university”.  The faculty are also concerned about keeping their AAU status – UO is the only Oregon university with this status.

OSU (BB)

• Faculty Economic Welfare Committee… Provost promising good raises, but no details given.
• Bob wants to do an equity study on compensation.

SOU (KY)

• Administrative change to College of Arts & Sciences is painful.
• APSOU negotiations not yet to salary, but summer school talk has been interesting.  RAM monies from state have not been reported to the union.
• Searching for a new Provost.
• Accreditation visit at end of October.

EOU (GM)

• WSU poaching on EOU’s traditional turf for enrollment.
• Enrollment will be down at least 5.8% -- right now it’s nearly 7.5%.
• Dorm debt also coming home to roost.
• Must turn $1.5 M in temporary cuts into permanent cuts.  Must also cut $3 M more in permanent cuts.
• Supposedly they have only two years to make these cuts.
• Greg is chief negotiator this year…

OIT (TT)

• Their operating budget is up around 25%.
• President Dow is still convalescing, but is still technically President, and Provost is Acting President.
• Everyone got a 2% increase this fall.  President & Provost both talk about a 4-5% total per year, when all is said and done.
• Health Building is “done”.  But rest of the building hinges on additional (Feb. E-board) funding.
• Provost has announced a reinstitution of deans (0 to 4).
• Institutional floors: difference between lowest floor, rank-to-rank, is 20%.

WOU (SG)

• The union has settled bargaining: 33 steps, 2% between steps, 11.7% overall increase over biennium.  Lowest step moves up to $40.5 thousand this year and to $42.0.  COLA amounts to 3.84% in first year and 3.70%.  Will add a 34th step in 08-09.  Each promotion = 4 steps up.
• Got the same PEBB settlement that SEIU got.
• Accreditation – “passed”, but assessment an issue.

PSU (JI and JA)

• Union has already settled for PEBB plan from SEIU.
• Administrators just got 10-25% salary increases.
• Bargaining pace is otherwise slow.
• Enrollment up about 3%.
• Fixed term faculty got essentially no raises (yet).
• UO has bought a building in Portland & allegedly might move some programs up there, and PSU is worried about the competition.

Executive Director Report (Mark Nelson) --

There will be a February session.  Merkley (House Speaker and U.S. Senate candidate) wants a short/trivial one, while Courtney (Senate President) wants significant things done.  Senate is much more organized at this point.

We discussed the 2007-09 OUS budget at length.  We are not clear on legislative intent versus OUS intent of the $10 M salary package.

OUS really wants to renormalize the cells in the RAM model, which hasn’t been funded as envisioned except for its first year (1999?).  The vision is to achieve this over the next two biennia.

It was noted that OSU-Cascades seems to be getting funding out of proportion to its enrollment.

$125 M for state employees.  DAS and OUS both receive COLA’s of 3% and 3.2%.  DAS claims OUS’ share is $25M.  (We think this is low.)  Won’t be released until February.  OUS claims they need $40M more than the $25M to implement these raises for everyone.  Part of this is because so much of OUS campus budgets are not General Fund based.

There is some interest in unionization at OSU and UO; nothing imminent.

PERS:  main activity is that the Kantor decision, while favorable to the coalition, has enough looseness that PERS has been maintaining it can continue to recover alleged “overpayments”.  Kantor will be rewriting his decision & hopefully PERS will be brought into line.

We still have lots of concern about how the PERS Board is using its reserves.  It appears their primary concern is to lower employer rates, rather than benefiting PERS retirees.  If this is done, it directly affects ORP contribution rates.

We briefly discussed the changes in the ORP and TDI choices for faculty, effective November 1.

Membership points:  Tuition/fee reductions for faculty dependents, fighting off delinking ORP contribution rate, break-in-service litigation, policing OUS and the Legislature, good year in the Legislature, we forced OUS to have real faculty input on the changes to the ORP & TDI choices.  We’ll get a “Fact Sheet” (one side) and “Goals” (other side).

Regional faculty member on board – rumor is Rosemary Powers at EOU will be named.  We think she’d make a good choice. 

Tim would like to see AOF look at salary paid that is “non-PERS” eligible.

Future meetings:          Oct 20, Nov 17, no Dec mtg, Jan 12 

Meeting adjourned at 12:15 PM