Greetings as we start a new semester.

I kind of did the “welcome back” column in LAST week’s edition of RM, but for those who THIS week are just getting back into their routines, we’re glad you are here for the Spring 09 semester—especially our Racer students! MSU students make the City of Murray what it is—and having everyone back on campus (and increased levels of activity at the Extended Campuses too) gets life back to normal for me. Even if Walmart is more crowded now… And again—though I addressed it last week—we’ll soon be reporting on the savings from our “power down” green initiative over the break. Even with the severe cold snap right when we closed in December, the University had significant savings and I appreciate the assistance of everyone who helped on this project.

In one of my last messages before the holidays, I announced to the campus that we were being hit with a 4% mid-year rescission in our state appropriations that would force us to identify and return about $2.1 million from the PRESENT-YEAR budget. (In that particular column, I also put in a link to the budget reduction plan MSU was required to file with the Commonwealth to accomplish the giveback.)

There have been some developments since then, while many of you were gone.

Governor Steve Beshear has proposed a new tobacco tax that, in part, would raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 70 cents. If that measure is successful during this spring’s “short session” of the Kentucky General Assembly—our current-year giveback of state funds would be lowered to 2%, or around one million dollars for MSU.

That doesn’t solve all our budgetary problems since we still expect NO additional, extra state money for 2009-10 (Fiscal Year 2010) at this point—PLUS, we already know MSU’s fixed costs will increase by $1 million in FY10, PLUS I don’t want to go two years running with no salary increases for staff, PLUS we can’t just jack up tuition to cover all of our needs—but a new revenue source for the Commonwealth (tobacco tax or otherwise) would certainly put higher education in a better position than it is now.

Time will tell how all this will unfold, but we will do everything we can to keep the Campus Community aware of status developments as situations warrant over the course of the coming weeks. I plan to be spending a great deal of time in Frankfort as the legislature reconvenes starting on February 3.

Let me close with a couple of additional short notes:

On an occasional basis—as I did a bit this past semester—I am going to use some guest columnists for RM in the future. This provides some MSU notables the opportunity to talk about their programs and update the University on happenings in various units that maybe haven’t been reported on elsewhere. Provost Gary Brockway will appear in this space next week to start that off.

Also, my blog will open back up this week with a new posting. I have been reading what’s been put up since the last posting, although I haven’t tried to respond to postings much during that time. However, I will crank back up this week for the semester and hope many of you will take a look and share a thought or two.

Have a great week…and great semester.

Randy Dunn