University faculty and staff could be required to take unpaid vacations as state legislators voice concerns that universities aren’t trimming enough fat from their budgets.

“At present we are not anticipating any furloughs, but the state could order them,” said Tom Jackson, vice president of public affairs for the University.

The University System of Georgia has traditionally opposed furloughs – or time off without pay – because it is a temporary solution for permanent budget cuts, said John Millsaps, spokesperson for the Board of Regents.

“[Typically] we would never consider furloughs,” Millsaps said in a Thursday phone interview. “It is [University System Chancellor Erroll Davis's] last resort.”

Because employment contracts protect tenured teachers from furloughs, Millsaps said University System administrators have asked their legal office to investigate “any options available to us to give us flexibility in our faculty contracts.”

It turns out the University System can, in fact, implement furloughs if the Board of Regents declares a “state of exigency” – “a very serious step akin to a company declaring bankruptcy,” Millsaps said.

“But that would make it very difficult to recruit faculty, and more difficult to sell bonds to create new facilities – and the board would be extremely reluctant ever to do that.”

He said the Regents have not declared exigency in the board’s 77 years of existence.

Consideration of furloughs comes just days after the chairman of the Georgia Higher Education Subcommittee said in a March 2 hearing that “more legislators complained to him about the lack of furloughs than any other higher education concern,” according to an Athens Banner-Herald report.

But Millsaps said it would be difficult for the University System to implement furloughs fairly.

“Out of the 40,000 University System employees, there are 10,000 faculty – whose salaries account for most of payroll – so you are asking three quarters of employees who don’t account for the majority of costs to take up a share of faculty salaries,” he said.

Also, some faculty members’ salaries are funded by grants and professorships, and the foundations sponsoring those teachers may not permit furloughs. That leaves the professors whose salaries are state-funded at a greater risk, he said.

How the University handles cuts should be left up to its administration, a University professor of economics said.

“We have had some pressure from the legislature to prove we’re cutting our budget,” said Jeffrey Dorfman, also a member of the University Council’s educational affairs committee.

“I am an economist and it makes sense to me that we should be told by the state how much to cut and it should be left up to the University’s administration to decide how those cuts will be met,” he said in a Thursday phone interview.

Millsaps said the University System has operated under that plan successfully in the past.

“We have managed all of our cuts to date. And we have managed them without doing furloughs,” he said. “Whatever the cut target has been, we’ve made it. If we had been asked to cut ‘X’ amount out of our budget, we’ve done it.”

He said because Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue gave faculty members merit pay increases in January despite budget constraints, some people may assume higher education is faring better than other state agencies – when in fact, “none of the Board of Regents’ 280 employees received the raise, and no one will be receiving the pay increase next year.”

Ryan Nesbit, associate vice president of finance and administration for the University, said furloughs are not a sufficient cost-cutting measure.

“The chances then are pretty good that while this is an option, it is not an option of first choice,” he said. “When you are looking at permanent budget reductions, you want a permanent solution.”

He said “there are a lot of issues to be resolved” before furloughs would be an option.

Millsaps said during the 2003 budget crunch, the governor cut $290 million from the University System’s budget. In fiscal year 2009, Perdue cut $240 million.

“Those dollars were never restored,” he said. “Once our budget is reduced, that is permanent. There are no temporary cuts. So you make permanent structural changes to adjust to the permanent cuts.”

Such permanent changes have included layoffs and asking all system employees to pay an additional $35 million collectively for health care, he said.

Millsaps said Perdue has given the University System another cut amounting to $20 million for fiscal year 2010.

In the meantime, Dorfman said he would rather see firings over furloughs.

“I would hate to think [the University System] would furlough people just to make a politician happy,” he said.