Politics on the Hudson

   Members of United University Professions continued their drumbeat today against budget reductions at the State University of New York and for allowing the 64-campus system to keep all of the revenues generated by a tuition hike this spring. As the state faces a $14 billion budget gap, Gov. David Paterson wants to reduce state funding by almost the total amount of additional money the higher tuition brings in, and implement other cuts. The 35,000-member union wants the state to increase income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to increase revenue.

   “The budget knife has gone deep into the bone and we just don’t have anything left,” UUP President Phillip Smith told union members who gathered at the Capitol Tuesday.

   Cuts to SUNY mean fewer faculty members and support staff, courses being canceled and turning away students, he said.

   SUNY’s budget was cut this fiscal year, which ends March 31, and is headed in that direction next year unless the Legislature changes the governor’s budget recommendation.

   ”The fact is you cannot get us out of this problem by cuts,” said Glenn McNiff, a political science and American government professor at SUNY New Paltz and a member of the union’s state executive board. Most of the school’s budget goes toward personnel, he said.

   Besides restoring money to SUNY, priorities for state officials should be changing the income-tax structure and making sure some of the federal stimulus money for New York goes to higher education, he said.

   UUP also opposes the governor’s proposal to withhold a 3 percent raise, add a five-day lag payroll, create a new tier for the state pension plan and merge the New York State Theatre Institute with the Egg theater in Albany.