LSU System to cut 400 positions

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Jul 10, 2009 - Page: 1A

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The LSU System announced budget plans Thursday to lay off or eliminate close to 400 employee positions — far fewer than the more than 1,000 job losses feared.

The reductions include about 100 jobs axed on LSU’s flagship Baton Rouge campus, LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said.

The LSU systemwide cuts include LSU medical schools, but not the state’s LSU-run public hospital system, which is coping with its own reduction in state funds.

“I think they’re substantial,” LSU System President John Lombardi said of $52 million in budget cuts because of reduced state revenue. “But I don’t think they’re as bad as we anticipated.

“We’ll function, but we won’t function well,” he added. “And it won’t be at a sustainable level.”

The LSU System includes five academic campuses, a law school, agricultural center, biomedical research center and two medical schools.

The plans released Thursday did include drafts, but not finalized budgets, for the main LSU campus and the University of New Orleans.

“General comments do not a budget make,” Lombardi said of the drafts of the system’s two largest schools.

Martin said the details will be completed shortly for the flagship campus.

“We’re so much bigger and more complex,” Martin said, noting that he is awaiting details on what and who are being cut from 14 academic colleges. “We’re going to do this right and not just fast.”

The main LSU campus employs nearly 3,300 people. The Baton Rouge campus is coping with a nearly $20 million cut, about a 9 percent decrease in state funds.

Martin emphasized that ancillary units such as the LSU museums, LSU Press and Center for Advanced
Microstructures and Devices are being cut more to avoid closing academic programs and laying off tenure-track faculty. Preserving the academic core is key, he said.

The award-winning LSU Press, for instance, was getting $500,000 per year but exceeding its budget and ending up with close to $1.5 million a year in state funds, he said. Now the press will have to make do with $400,000 and self-generated revenue.