We struggled with the same issues in Maryland. In the end, our campus decided to apply the furloughs to all employees, regardless of the source of funds, based on the principle of equity. In addition, most of our agreements are funded by the state and had already been reduced in value as part of the state plan to recover from the deficit.

Other campuses only applied it to the portion of the employee's salary that was funded by the state, but did not allow them to increase the FTE in sponsored research to offset the furloughs.

A description of our furlough plan can be found in our website at: http://www.ubalt.edu/template.cfm?page=2924.

Hope this helps.
Magui

Margarita M. Cardona, MS, CRA
Director of Sponsored Research
University of Baltimore
Office of the Provost
1420 N. Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
(ph) 410-837-6191
(fx)  410-837- 5249

________________________________

From: Research Administration List on behalf of Wilma Ennenga
Sent: Wed 2/4/2009 11:10 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] Furloughs

I've been asked for an opinion whether it's allowable for employees who receive grant funding to offset furlough days by increasing their FTE on their sponsored projects. A related question is whether the furlough should apply only to state funded positions or to all employees at the university, regardless of source of funding.

My sense is that A-21 consistency requirements mean that the furlough must apply to all employees equally, and that to arbitrarily increase one's time on one's sponsored project by the exact amount of one's furlough would raise a great big red flag to auditors.  Further, while it's obvious that sponsored project funds aren't the dollars that the University is trying to recover, I think we would have to revise our HR policies to exempt sponsored projects from this requirement. If we do that, we run into the consistency requirement, and more important, this all seems to beg the issue of what the criteria are for making exceptions like this.

I'd appreciate any information, references, or guidance anyone is able to provide!

Thanks very much,

Winnie

Wilma G. (Winnie) Ennenga

Director, Office of Grant and Contract Services

Northern Arizona University

Applied Research and Development Bldg. #56, Suite 240

1298 South Knoles Drive

Flagstaff, AZ 86011-4130

Telephone: 928/523-8319

Fax: 928/523-1075

P Please consider the environment before printing this email

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