September 22, 2020

Dear CSU Colleagues,

As some of you may have seen from local news reports, the Governor’s Office is expected to announce mandatory furloughs this week for Colorado state employees making more than $50,000 annually, to be implemented beginning November 27, 2020.   However, as part of the comprehensive plan outlined by the state Department of Personnel and the Governor’s Office, institutions of higher education are granted authority to manage their own budgets in this regard.  This means that Colorado State University may implement these furloughs but is not required to do so by the state.

I am very pleased to be able to reassure all of you on this point: CSU is not examining furloughs at this time.

I spoke to Chancellor Frank about this as soon as we learned of this announcement, and we are in agreement that furloughing any of our employees would not be consistent with our commitment to all of you.  The Board established our FY20-21 budgets in June on the basis of conservative planning and with the primary goal of protecting our people in the face of economic uncertainty—and fall enrollment numbers across the CSU System are better than anticipated.  We are very pleased that the Governor has left furlough decisions to the universities and their governing boards.

If you have more questions or concerns about this recent state-level decision, I encourage all of you to reach out to CSU Human Resources at myhr@colostate.edu.  I promise that we will continue to keep all of you posted about decisions and developments like this one.

Sincerely,

Joyce