After receiving $69.8 million in federal stimulus dollars in August, ASU could possibly avoid budget cuts and furlough days this year, a University official said.

Morgan Olsen, ASU’s executive vice president, treasurer and CFO, said the stimulus funds allow the University to operate normally despite reductions in state funding.

“If we didn’t have those funds we would have to make reductions in our budget,” he said.

Olsen said ASU directed the stimulus money toward the faculty.

“We’re using the federal stimulus funds for support of a lot of the academic units,” Olsen said. “Mostly paying for salaries and benefits for people who are providing instruction.”

When making decisions about budget reductions and tuition levels, ASU officials made assumptions about how much federal funding the University would receive, Olsen said.

“Our assumptions fortunately proved to be pretty accurate thus far, so we’re at where we expected to be,” he said. “There’s no extra money, but we have the level of resources that we planned for.”

While the stimulus funds didn’t make up for the $86 million ASU lost in budget cuts last year, Olsen said ASU was pleased with the money it received.

“It certainly doesn’t make up for all of the reductions that have occurred, but it does cover a good portion of them,” Olsen said. “The idea was to ensure with the assistance of the stimulus funds that public institutions, colleges, universities and public schools had a certain amount of funding so they would not go below a base level.”

Andrea Smiley, an Arizona Board of Regents spokeswoman, said Gov. Jan Brewer allocated a total $154 million in stimulus funds to the three state universities.

From the stimulus money, UA received $60.8 million while NAU was given $23.5 million.

Smiley said federal money helps mitigate cuts but doesn’t cover the fallout from the $191.5 million total budget cuts that were made earlier this year.

“Considering the significant cuts that the universities sustained as a result of the Legislature determining the fiscal ‘09 budget, we’re very grateful that the governor applied for the federal stimulus money,” Smiley said.

Associated Students of ASU West president Andrew Clark said he was happy with the amount of stimulus money ASU received and how it was used.

“The stimulus package kind of defers our need to increase tuition dramatically for three or four years, which I think is great for now,” Clark said. “It gives us the option to be proactive about our future rather than be reactive.”

Clark said he thinks tuition could have increased by more than $10,000 without the money.

“The fact that we have the stimulus money and we’re able to keep tuition down at a really reasonable rate I think is a huge thing for students,” he said.

However, Tempe campus Undergraduate Student Government President Brendan O’Kelly said while students are grateful for the money, eventually it will run out.

“The storm is over for now, but in two years when these stimulus dollars stop coming in we’re going to have to look at finding a constant stream of revenue,” O’Kelly said. “That money should not be directly from the students’ pockets.”

O’Kelly said a way to ensure Arizona schools are funded is by making higher education a priority for state lawmakers.

“People like to talk about Dr. [Michael] Crow and the Arizona Board of Regents, but when it comes down to it, it’s the Arizona State Legislature,” O’Kelly said. “We have to make sure that higher education is a priority of the state Legislature.”

Reach the reporter at snrodri2@asu.edu.