April Board of Regents Meeting

uw system logoThe University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents will meet Thursday and Friday, April 10 and 11 at UW-River Falls. Audio and video webcasts of the meeting will be available here.

The regents will meet in committee Thursday morning and hear from UW-River Falls Chancellor Dean Van Goren Thursday afternoon. The full board will also discuss financial reporting and the annual budget process.

The Education Committee will discuss faculty workload and compensation as part of its discussion, but supporting materials were not included with the agenda. Other items on the committee’s agenda include approval of annual Vilas Trust requests, a report on program planning and review, and renewal of UW-Milwaukee charter school authorizations.

The Audit Committee will meet jointly with the Business and Finance Committee. They will discuss two Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) reports:

The LAB found that UW System’s Human Resources System (HRS) continues to have problems with implementation, accuracy, and security.  Insurance billing errors totaled more than $10 million from April 2011 through May 2013.

The committees will also discuss revisions to UW System policies on financial reserves. Campus financial reserves have been the subject of intense legislative scrutiny since April 2013 when the Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported that UW System holds more than $650 million in financial reserves.

The committees recommend approval of a plan that requires individual campuses to hold between 10 and 15 percent of their total fiscal year expenditures in reserve. Campuses with less than 10 percent fund balances must report a savings plan to the regents, while campuses holding more than 15 percent fund balances must provide justification to the regents and submit a spending plan for tuition, auxiliary operations, general operations, and unrestricted program revenue.