Editor’s Note: This is the fourth installment in a series of budget articles.

The vice president for business affairs said he rarely had good news to share about Eastern’s budget situation, but Friday was different.

William Weber, vice president for business affairs, announced, at the Council on University Planning and Budget meeting on Friday, that after about six months of waiting, the state had completed the late FY 11

payments.

On June 30, which marked the end of Fiscal Year 11, the state owed Eastern about $21 million of its total state appropriations of about $47.4 million.

Weber said the $21 million made up about 44 percent of Eastern’s total general revenue appropriation from the state and was about a tenth of Eastern’s all-funds budget.

“When I learned this earlier today, I was so excited I almost ran home to get my Santa Claus hat since it is rare that I get to share positive budget news,” Weber said during the meeting. “Since the end of June, we have periodically gotten installments for the money that was owed, but by the end of November, we were still owed about $6.4 million.”

Weber said Eastern tried to make up for the late payments by slowing university spending and internal borrowing from non-restricted funds.

Examples of non-restricted funds include various reserve accounts such as purchasing academic equipment and remodeling Pemberton Hall to accommodate the new location for the Honors College, he said.

“Now that the appropriation has been paid off, I know for certain that those places from which we borrowed can be totally repaid, and we can move forward with expenditures for this year,” Weber said.

Examples of non-restricted funds include various reserve accounts such as purchasing academic equipment and remodeling Pemberton Hall to accommodate the new location for the Honors College, he said.

“Now that the appropriation has been paid off, I know for certain that those places from which we borrowed can be totally repaid, and we can move forward with expenditures for this year,” Weber said.

Spending was also slowed over the past two years by shrinking Eastern’s employee headcount by about 100 personnel and requiring vice presidential approval for travel expenditures, he said.

“When we hadn’t received more than $20 million of our $47.4 million appropriation, the state comptroller’s office repeatedly assured us that we would receive our full appropriation by the end of the calendar year, and so we are very pleased that it turned out to be the case and that they did carry through with that commitment,” Weber said.

For FY 12, Eastern has a total state appropriation of about $46.9 million.

Eastern sent a voucher, a request for fund reimbursement, to the state totaling about $28 million and has received about $14.2 million.

“The state is not fully current with this fiscal year, but they are not overwhelmingly far behind,” Weber said. “While the cash flow challenges continue, we are seeing some modest improvements.”

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].