The faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has provided state legislators and others a lesson in responsibility and charity in the face of dire fiscal times.

The budget recently approved by the N.C. legislature provided no pay raises to state employees. That means at UNCG that none of the about 1,000 staff members will receive increases this year. Faculty members at UNCG, however, have received raises owing to this year’s tuition increase.

Now the approximately 700 faculty members at UNCG are raising money among themselves to give to the university staff. As word of the faculty’s generosity got out, alumni and citizens joined in.

The idea got its start in the spring in the faculty senate, where UNCG faculty members first heard that they would be getting raises but that the staff would not. Chairman Ben Ramsey, associate professor of religious studies, started the discussion and got other faculty members involved through a letter-writing campaign.

Ramsey said the goal is to raise $250,000 for the staff in time for Christmas.

Budget hurts struggling workers
Not only did the N.C. legislature schedule no salary increases for state workers, the revised budget that legislators approved appears certain to harm workers, especially poor workers, across the state. According to an analysis by John Locke Foundation President John Hood, the new budget directly raises the state tax burden by about $157 million. The increase owes primarily to changes in business taxes and the cancellation of tax cuts — cuts intended to help families weather last year’s $700 million increase in sales and income taxes.

Worse, the revised budget would probably provoke tens of millions of dollars in property-tax increases, Hood said, thanks to the state’s confiscation of $333.4 million in tax reimbursements to local governments.

That’s on top of the $75 million increase in property-tax increases by city and county governments in 2002-03, because of withheld tax sharings and reimbursement dollars, that was previously estimated by the foundation.

“These tax increases couldn’t have come at a worse time for our state’s businesses and families, many of whom are struggling with layoffs, declining wealth, and at best an uncertain future,” Hood said. “Our leaders should be debating which of North Carolina’s relatively high taxes to cut to get our economy moving again, not which ones to raise to preserve government programs.”

Similar moves by other faculty
Last year 66 faculty members and administrators at N.C. Central University chose to forgo a scheduled raise in order to help the university offset budget cuts, especially to help prevent positions from being cut. The combined amount forgone by the N.C. Central faculty ended up being about $41,000.

The effort at NCCU wasn’t a group effort, but a combination of individual sacrifices, Faculty Senate Chairman Percy Murray, a professor of history, told the Herald-Sun of Durham.

Faculty at N.C. State in 1996-97 volunteered to forgo $4.2 million in new tuition money, which was scheduled to go toward increasing their own salaries, and directed the money instead to improving the library. Their contribution was a key factor in a decade-long effort of improving the library at N.C. State.

Sanders is assistant editor of Carolina Journal.