February 25, 2025

Seventeen SUNY campuses still face crippling deficits heading into yet another budget season, three years after UUP first raised an alarm about the problem.

With that in mind, UUP President Fred Kowal offered a tactful rebuttal to SUNY Chancellor John King Jr., when Kowal testified during the annual higher education budget hearing Feb. 25 before the Senate and Assembly finance committees.

State Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat and a strong advocate for public education, posed a direct question to Kowal: Did Kowal agree with King’s earlier testimony in the same hearing that the number of financially distressed campuses was much lower than UUP’s figure—five campuses, according to King, not the 17 that UUP claims?

“I don’t accept the idea that there are only five campuses (carrying multimillion-dollar deficits),” Kowal said.

Kowal’s response touched on a recurring sore point for UUP, which is that the SUNY Board of Trustees has for the past two budgets failed to fairly apportion operating funds in the budget. Instead, the Trustees have shifted a disproportionate share of those funds to the four University Centers, leaving the distressed campuses to continue grappling with deficits that date back to the Cuomo years and the coronavirus pandemic.

UUP is specifically seeking $102.1 million for the 17 cash-strapped campuses, many of them smaller, technical, agricultural and comprehensive schools located in communities across Upstate New York.

“The funding needs to increase directly to these (distressed) campuses,” Kowal said. He added that for the past 15 years, the state budget has mapped out the amount of operating funds that should go to all SUNY campuses—a plan that the Trustees have seemed to ignore.

Downstate deserves more time

All of the public teaching hospitals need state coverage of debt service and at least partial coverage of employee fringe benefit costs; the hospitals are the only state entities required to cover these costs. UUP is asking for an additional $250 million in capital funding for SUNY Downstate and firm support for the hospital’s continued existence.

Kowal also used the hearing to urge the state to extend the April 1 deadline for a report by the state-appointed advisory board that is devising a plan for Downstate University Hospital. The hospital faced the very real threat of closure a year ago, and Kowal serves on that advisory board. Community members have repeatedly urged that the advisory board be given more time to thoughtfully complete its recommendations to the state, Kowal told lawmakers.

“I’m a born optimist, but April 1 is going to be extremely challenging,” Kowal testified.