President Timothy Killeen issued an administrative hiring freeze on July 2 in response to an absent fiscal 2016 state budget.

University spokesman Tom Hardy said the hiring freeze will affect all central administration (University Administration) positions at the University.

“We want to make sure that we’ve taken some deliberative, concrete steps to put the University in a position to act fiscally conservative,” Hardy said. “So one of the first steps in that process is to impose a hiring freeze for UA until a budget is passed.”

According to Hardy, two dozen positions the University was seeking to fill will be affected and any new vacancies will also be frozen. The openings range from a $25,000-a-year civil service position up to a $160,000-a-year academic professional director position.

Hardy said currently, there are 60 vacant positions in the UA and those that are in the process of being filled will not be affected because their searches were well-underway by June 30, the last day of the fiscal year.

He said a special waiver must be put in place to fill the remaining vacant positions.

Hardy said the hiring freeze would not impact any faculty jobs or other positions on the University’s three campuses because “they will be taking other definitive, concrete steps as a result to the ongoing state fiscal crisis.”

According to Hardy, the University is in “good-enough shape and will be able to make payroll,” and will handle the hiring freeze if the budget crisis is short-term.

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