Financially, the UW has been getting hit hard lately. To add one more legislative uppercut to the university’s already sore mandible, earlier this month Gov. Gregoire enacted a bill that leaves the university vulnerable to losing key faculty members to other institutions.

Legislative bill No. 5460 was passed earlier this month, which means the UW will not be able to negotiate faculty salaries with competing institutions. This effectively nullifies the tools the UW uses to keep top faculty at the institution.

“This bill provides us with no ability to be flexible in meeting real-time challenges we all face when addressing outside offers of employment offered to our highest caliber faculty and staff,” wrote the Council of Presidents in a recent letter to legislators. “Most simply, we have no recourse to retain faculty that receive outside offers from competing institutions.”

The Council of Presidents is a voluntary association that brings together the presidents of Washington’s six public universities to discuss views and interests regarding higher education.

The bill is an effort to tighten the belt on state spending and adjust it to better fit the state’s revenue shortcomings.

In any given year, top faculty are approached and sometimes recruited by other universities.

“Some number [of approaches] result in the faculty member getting a firm offer to make a move, usually with a sizable increase in the things that matter professionally, [such as] a better-equipped lab or more graduate assistants or a higher salary,” said James Harrington, the faculty legislative liaison.

Faculty members are more likely to stay at their current job if it produces some sort of upgrade, Harrington said. For instance, if the university made progress getting better labs, more funding for graduate students or could pay a higher salary, there would be a good chance faculty would remain at the same university.

“5460 prohibits any of this; major equipment purchases, at least until July, hiring assistants from state money or salary increments,” Harrington said. “The people we would lose would be the very best people. This costs the university in reputation, course quality and grant money.”

In 2008, the UW responded to 16 competitive offers to its faculty.

The bill may also have other unintended effects.

“Being able to give promotional raises to faculty is as important to us as anything,” said David Lovell, chair of the UW’s Faculty Senate. “We only get two promotions in our career — from assistant to associate professor and from associate to full.”

Each of those promotions is accompanied with a 7.5 percent increase in salary. Compared to the usual zero to five percent annual increase, these promotion increases are important events in the lives and careers of the faculty members.

It’s not clear whether 5460 will prohibit those increases.

“It wouldn’t be fair for people not to get this critical raise just because their promotion comes up this year,” Lovell said.

Reach contributing writer Eric Staples at development@dailyuw.com.