The school wrote off $4.5 million owed to WSU by its applied research arm, Wright State Applied Research Corporation, Ulliman said, and made changes at WSARC to prevent it from operating at a loss, as it has since 2010.
The university has also budgeted $1 million this year for the cancelled presidential debate, after spending nearly $2.4 million last year before calling it off last month.
“We really need to stick on our remediation plan and we need to act immediately if we see any variance on that plan,” Ulliman said. “We are taking this very seriously.”
The remediation plan calls for cutting $27.7 million from the school’s budget and pulling $18.9 million from reserves over the next two years.
Trustees approved that approach at a meeting in June where at the end of the fiscal year they first learned that the school had overspent its budget by $34 million.
In response, trustees today approved a process for monthly updates on the school’s finances and scheduled meetings throughout the year to monitor the books.
Trustees also approved a change to WSU’s investment policy to focus on less-risky investments after losing $1.7 million last year instead of bringing in $6.5 million as they expected.
WSU Finance Committee Chairman Doug Fecher also proposed rewriting the school’s 24-page financial policy, a guiding document that was last updated in 2003.
“Governing policies provide guardrails,” said Fecher, CEO of Wright-Patt Credit Union, saying he hopes a full revision will help keep the school on track to being in the black by the end of next year.
“At the end of this year … we cannot have overspent our budget,” he said.
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