Eastern has received $5.7 million to date from the state of Illinois, about 11 percent of its total appropriations.

Tuition money will carry the university safely through the end of March, but after that point, the university will be on shaky financial ground without further payments from the state.

“We have sources of money other than what we receive from the state,” Bill Weber, vice president for business affairs, said. “In particular, we receive tuition, and so it’s the tuition dollars that are keeping us going for now.”

Tuition money is currently keeping the university afloat, but it is not enough to support the school long term.

“Where we could start running into problems is out in the latter part of March, first part of April,” Paul McCann, university treasurer, said. “If we get no further money from the state, we’ll have some issues regarding cash flow.”

The university has billed the state for $30 million of its $50 million appropriation, but the state has been unable to meet the majority of its financial obligations to the university.

“All of the state universities are regularly communicating with the comptroller, expressing our need and desire for the additional money, but they are having problems of their own coming up with additional funds,” McCann said. “This all stems from a lack of sales tax being collected in the state, a lack of income taxes being collected. The economy in the state of Illinois is very poor right now.”

Universities are not the only group suffering from a lack of state funding this year.

“You see the health industry complaining that they don’t have their money; human services folks, the prisons are saying that they don’t have the money they need,” McCann said. “Everybody is lining up to say, ‘Give us the money first; give us more; give us what we need.’ It’s going to be a very difficult decision for the legislature to make, deciding where higher education fits in the hierarchy of needs.”

McCann does not expect to see any more money coming in for at least a month.

“I really think the reason we even got what we did is because we were all complaining that we needed some to head things off before tuition started coming in,” he said. “I do not look for anything more prior to the middle of February or March. I hope I’m wrong, but I just haven’t seen things change around enough in the state of Illinois to say that they’re going to just have boo-coo money sitting around waiting for us.”

Last week, the University of Illinois announced it would implement furloughs to help meet its payroll needs while it waits for $436 million in back payments from the state.

Eastern has been budgeting conservatively and creating cost savings in any way possible to help limp through the budget crunch.

“The university is actively collecting ideas for cost containment through the Council on University Planning and Budget,” Weber said.

Even with as much cost cutting as the university can muster, it won’t be enough to prevent strains on cash flow.

“Lots of our costs aren’t until the second half of the fiscal year,” Weber said. “Tuition has kept us going okay, but definitely we need to have that state funding coming in over the next few months in order to stay ok.”

Sarah Ruholl can be reached at 581-7942 or [email protected].