Questions have arisen recently over the payment of millions of dollars in bonuses and incentives to College of Medicine faculty while budget cuts threaten the jobs of dozens of employees and academic programs at UF.
An e-mail sent by Bruce Kone, former dean of the College of Medicine, to faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences who could see their departments slashed substantially in the next round of cuts, calls attention to the bonuses and accuses UF of not doing all it can to protect departments from crippling cuts.
"The idea that UF doesn't have enough money to continue support for you is preposterous," he wrote.
UF records show that, last year, hundreds of College of Medicine faculty were paid about $7.6 million in bonuses and incentives, down from about $9.2 million the previous year.
The awards amount to about 1.3 percent of the college's total budget in 2007-2008, which was about $550 million.
"Makes AIG seem paltry," Kone wrote in his e-mail, referring to the $165 million in bonuses paid to AIG executives after the company's federal bailout.
The largest single award to a UF faculty member was an incentive payment of $99,000. Most payments were below $5,000, though some received multiple payments.
Money for the awards came from the Faculty Practice Plan, said Michael Good, dean of the college. The plan is funded by revenues from faculty members practicing medicine, Good said.
"This is faculty working in the clinic, working in the hospital, taking care of patients," he said. "No state funds were used to pay these bonuses."
"This isn't AIG," he said.
While some faculty who got awards do not treat patients, most who received the awards contributed to the practice plan, UF spokesman Steve Orlando said.
Good argued the awards are necessary to keep top faculty at UF.
"In the highly competitive world of academic medicine, we have to compete for doctors that could be practicing at Harvard, at Duke, at San Francisco," he said.
Faculty are evaluated based on patient satisfaction and professionalism, as well as the number of patients they see and procedures they perform, and are compensated accordingly, he said.
But some critics, such as John Biro, president of the United Faculty of Florida, UF's faculty union, argue the money could be better spent by preventing layoffs instead of adding to the salaries of some faculty.
"How come we have all that money and then we have to fire tenure-track faculty in CLAS (the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and the school of education?" he asked, adding UF continues to hire new administrators, faculty and staff.
"I don't see how an administration can be allowed to get away with this," Biro said. "That's not what you do in a university, that's what you do at Enron maybe."
Orlando said it's possible the money used for bonuses and incentives could be put toward other things, like preventing layoffs, for example, but he said that would hurt the health of the practice plan.
"If you are one of the people performing the service and providing medical care for the community… and then suddenly (the money is) being used for purposes other than the College of Medicine…it becomes a disincentive," he said.
The argument that UF should use funds from other colleges and even affiliated organizations, such as Shands at UF or the University Athletic Association, is not a new one.
Members of UF's faculty union asked UF to do it last year, and the idea was thrust into the spotlight earlier this month when members of the faculty and graduate assistant unions proposed it at the Board of Trustees meeting.
Though some university officials have said UF cannot take money from affiliated organizations, such as Shands at UF, which held about $600 million in unrestricted assets in 2008, to balance its budget, the process is technically possible, said Matt Fajack, UF's chief financial officer.
However, he said it would be difficult. The board of directors for the organization would have to sign off on the transfer and, if that didn't happen, UF could conceivably replace board members when they step down over time with new ones favorable to the idea.
Another idea proposed by the unions is using the university's own unrestricted assets, which totaled about $80 million in 2008, to prevent layoffs. UF officials have stated the university cannot use some of that money because they are required by state law to keep a certain amount in reserves. As it stands, however, UF is only required to notify the Board of Governors, which oversees the state's 11 public universities, when reserves dip below a certain amount.
But Fajack said even if the state doesn't require it, he still thinks it's good fiscal policy to have healthy reserves in case of emergencies- if the state withdrew funding mid-year, for example.
"The state could hold ($80 million) back in a minute," he said.
And, even in the best case scenario, he said using the money to prevent layoffs probably wouldn't help faculty much in lean budget times like this.
"We don't lay them off this year, but we lay them off next year, and then our reserves are completely gone," he said.
Editor's note: An estimated $15 million in Faculty Practice Plan funds will
be used for academic programs in the College of Medicine in 2008-2009,
according to Michael Good, the college's dean.
