Requests for formal committees to oversee the campus’ budget and a deferment of proposed budget cuts from Sacramento State’s Faculty Senate and provost received support Friday from President Alexander Gonzalez.

The support ?” presented in a letter from interim Provost Joseph Sheley ?” came a week after faculty members openly criticized administration for not informing the campus community of its $6.5 million deficit sooner.

Gonzalez said the university’s deficit resulted from departments using their discretionary funds to avoid budget cuts.

Last week, Gonzalez said budget cuts were being proposed because the university’s departments could no longer use its in discretionary funds, which total $8 million, because they would become depleted.

The letter states that Gonzalez agreed to postpone baseline budget cuts to seven colleges and the Library for the current academic year, but will respond formally when he receives an official request from the Senate.

“The president has agreed to the request,” Sheley wrote, adding that the agreement will result in the use of “University reserve” funds.

The agreement comes three days before registration for the spring semester, terminating department chairs’ fear of having to cut the number of classes and add more students to each class, which is what they were asked to do when the proposed budget cuts arose.

In a meeting with editors of The State Hornet, Gonzalez said he will establish a task force and a University Budget Advisory Committee, upon the Faculty Senate’s request, in order to prevent miscommunication about the budget and how it works.

Gonzalez said the task force will differ from the university’s current three-member Budget Advisory Group in various ways: Representatives of the new committee will include faculty, staff and students who are interested in the matter, and faculty and staff representatives will be asked to serve three-year terms.

Sheley, who is also associate vice president of Academic Affairs, wrote that the task force will review the university’s budgets for the next three academic years to advise the campus president on how to address needed cuts and recommend budget strategies in order to balance the budget.

In his letter, Sheley added the purpose of multi-year terms of faculty and staff members.

“It is important that the task force have sufficient time to study the data pertaining to our budget situation of the moment,” wrote Sheley, who added that the task force would question the data and look at possible strategies to balance the budget.

Gonzalez said the main goal for the task force is to be educated on how the university’s budget actually works.

“The problem is that there is not enough information out there,” Gonzalez said.

The budget of each CSU campus is dependent on whether it reaches its enrollment target, which is defined by the chancellor’s office. Enrollment is measured by “full-time student equivalents” – each full-time student equivalent is made up from 15 units for undergraduate students and 12 units for graduate students.

Gonzalez said it’s important to inform everyone how the budget operates because it’s “confusing as heck.”

Gonzalez and Sheley were not available for further comment at the time of publication.

Nika Megino can be reached at [email protected]