July 28, 2020
The JCEP Questions: Budget and Local Unit/Department Oriented Questions
The next couple of weeks we will address questions that pertain to budget reductions and their impact on local units and departments.
The first is “What steps are being taken at the administrative level to lessen the financial impact on agent salaries and on county operations?”
One agent who engaged in a sabbatical project with the Extension Administration Team once stated in her sabbatical exit conversation that she was surprised how often administration weighed the effects of a potential decision on local unit (and department) wellbeing. I was very pleased to hear that, although the thought “Why wouldn’t we?” came to mind.
We always think about the ramifications of decisions on local units, departments, our Extension professionals and, most importantly, the people we serve. When we are in doubt regarding those effects, we will even contact people within our professional associations, local unit directors, board members, Extension state leaders, department heads, State Extension Advisory Council, and our agent and specialist advisory teams before making the decision.
Having a historical context regarding budget reductions and their effect on local units is important. Since 2008, either state or main campus appropriations to Extension have been trending downward. For the vast majority of that time, the local units were held harmless. Being held harmless does not mean that there was no budget cut to the local unit portion of our budget. It means that the local unit portion of the budget cut was paid centrally. Doing so, while it helps local units in the short run, depletes the system of cash reserves. After a while, it became impossible for K-State Research and Extension to cover the local unit portion of budget reductions centrally.
In the case of the most recent response to a budget reduction, the furlough, we looked at various scenarios. In the end, because of the salary levels of the agents and the multiple tier system of the furlough plan, local units were the least affected by a furlough as opposed to other ideas, such as reducing the K-State Research and Extension participation in agent salaries by a fixed percentage. We then further reduced the burden on local units by allowing them to buy out the furloughs or participate in the furloughs, whichever the local unit Extension Boards felt was most advantageous to their situation.
Leadership often involves making difficult decisions with no real upside for anybody. In those situations, it is critically important to make sure decisions are made so that the downside effect is minimized to the people we serve, our K-State Research and Extension professionals and volunteers, and our local units and departments. We cannot always make such decisions in a pain-free way, but we do work hard at trying to determine the least negatively impactful way of dealing with a reduced budget.