UT-MUO merger concerns

Yesterday as I was reading this Toledo Blade article, I couldn't help but wonder why the question of who will provide the at least 30 million dollars needed was not a part of the earlier merger discussion. You'd think that would be something that would be important to address. Yet when you read that article:

“In the private world, the shareholders pay the price,” said Richard Stansley, the lone nominee to be chairman of the merged institution’s board of trustees. “In the public world, since you don’t have shareholders, I believe it should be the taxpayers.”

“I don’t think there’s any expectation that the state of Ohio would provide 100 percent of the funding for the $30 million cost,” said state Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green).

Considering the merger is happening Saturday, you would think that logic would dictate where the money was coming from would have been one of the first key issues to resolve. More concerns come in when it comes to staff/administration issues. Yesterday it was stated:

“There’s one less president’s salary, that’s got to be savings, doesn’t it?” said state Rep. Shawn Webster (R., Hamilton), chairman of the Ohio House higher education subcommittee.

Ummm no, not quite, as the Blade article informs us:

MUO President Lloyd Jacobs will run the merged institution at a salary of $385,000. UT President Dan Johnson will work with the Toledo Science and Technology Corridor as a university professor of public policy and economic development but retain his president’s salary of $254,616.

Then, when you read today's article from the Toledo Blade, it appears that not only are there not being many changes made to administration but they are infact getting raises, some of them rather large raises:

Dan Morissette, who previously controlled MUO’s finances, will be given a 10 percent raise to $239,929 per year as the senior vice president for finance and strategy. His counterpart at UT, Dawn Rhodes, will remain at the school as vice president for finance and planning with her salary remaining at $175,000 annually.

William McMillen, the vice president of government relations, will get a boost from $98,226 to $105,226. As the vice president of administration, which puts him in charge of human resources for the entire university, William Logie will make $160,000 annually — almost a 21 percent increase.

These raises are being stated as a result of increased responsibility, however given the letter that was sent to one of the unions that represent nonacademic UT employees stated:

... the cuts are “the result of reorganization” and for “reasons of economy.”

I can't help wondering if the 11 positions identified to be cut even equal the amount of increases that we are aware of that have been handed out thus far to top administrators.

While I still support the idea of the merger, especially moving the UT college of pharmacy to what will be the new Health Science Campus, I think some of these issues should have been addressed quite some time ago. I also hope that very few area residents end up losing their employment as a result of this, especially if they can somehow find in their budget enough money to give generous raises to administrators.