Open letter from the Directors of Faculties, Institutes and Colleges of UNICAMP to State Deputies of São Paulo and to society in São Paulo. See the news here on the Unicamp website
Campinas, August 19, 2020.
On August 12, the Government of the State of São Paulo sent to the Legislative Assembly the Bill of Law (PL) 529/2020, which establishes measures aimed at the fiscal adjustment of the state.
In its Article 14, this PL determines that the "surplus" calculated in the balance sheets of the municipalities and foundations is transferred, at the end of each financial year, to the State Treasury, without the collegiate bodies of these entities having to approve this transfer. This measure directly affects, among other entities, the public universities in São Paulo (USP, UNESP AND UNICAMP) and FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation).
PL 529 not only violates the Federal and State Constitutions with regard to the autonomy of the institutions involved, but also, and above all, essential activities that these same institutions have been implementing to face the health and economic crises that we are experiencing.
In addition, strictly speaking, neither the public universities in São Paulo nor FAPESP have a surplus, but the financial reserves necessary for their functioning and these reserves have been used in the crisis.
In the case of universities, their main source of revenue is the ICMS, from which they receive a fixed percentage annually. This value naturally varies according to the volume of the state's revenue: when the economy is doing well and the revenue is higher, universities are able to save part of the resources; when the economy is going bad and revenues are decreasing, as it is now, with the COVID Pandemic19, reserves are used to guarantee teaching, research, extension activities, in addition to health care that, in the case of Unicamp, comes in more two-thirds of the university's own budget.
Health care, in fact, is a critical issue that at Unicamp will suffer greatly if the reserves that are currently being used to cover expenses are confiscated.
In the case of FAPESP, the funds it maintains are largely committed to financing already contracted, with medium and long-term projects. The suppression of these reserves will cause irreparable damage to the countless ongoing researches and to thousands of scientists in the state of São Paulo that are supported by FAPESP. The damage to the production of knowledge in the state in the country will be incalculable!
It is worth noting that, in the midst of all this, universities have been facing the pandemic tirelessly and exemplarily, despite the difficulties that this means when, as now, financial resources are decreasing. They continued to work, maintained their activities and quickly began to support health actions related to COVID19, including the care of citizens affected by the disease, the development and application of tests and, not least, the formation of a real force. task in research to map, prevent, combat and monitor the effects of the pandemic on São Paulo and Brazilian society.
The crisis has not, until now, prevented everyone (teachers, staff and students) from deploying to carry out activities remotely, both in undergraduate and graduate courses, and even in high school (yes, public universities in São Paulo also offer education basic and technical education and free for thousands of students).
In addition, Unicamp continues and expands the provision of health services to hundreds of thousands of citizens who attend high-level - and free - care provided by its hospitals and health centers that are mostly financed with Unicamp's own budget.
It is by managing their resources with austerity that the crisis has been managed. Good management, however, which should be praised, with the PL 529 will be penalized, as amounts are collected that today have been covering, even partially, the fall in the budget.
The purpose of rebalancing state finances is fair and must be undertaken, but as proposed in PL 529, withdrawing resources from universities and Fapesp at a time when they already work with deficit budgets, it is a “shot in the foot. ”Of São Paulo and Brazilian society.
The justification stated in PL529, of the need to comply with the state's social security obligations, is undoubtedly full of merit, but it should contribute to ensuring that nothing is removed from the universities, since they bear the expenses of their retirees.
If the PL is approved as it stands, universities will be triple penalized: 1) they have already lost resources of the order of 670 million due only to the drop in revenue in four months of the pandemic; 2) they will lose their reserves that have been covering the deficits resulting from this crisis, 3) they will have to pay their social security obligations to a greater extent than they already do. Finally, in particular, Unicamp will suffer an impact on the health services provided in its hospitals.
In view of the above, we ask Your Excellencies, deputies and state deputies who, legislating on behalf and in the interest of the people of São Paulo, the main beneficiary of public universities in São Paulo and research funded by FAPESP, and guided by the principle of defending human life , which governs the tireless commitment of researchers from São Paulo to combat COVID19, reformulate PL 529, particularly its Article 14, preserving the constitutional autonomy of universities and FAPESP and thus removing the burden of responsibility for a decision with devastating consequences: financial unfeasibility of universities and the annihilation of the country's main research promotion agency.
Finally, we call on the entire São Paulo and Brazilian society to engage in the defense of the public university and scientific research of excellence, as constitutional rights of every citizen of our state and as a condition for the development and defense of the sovereignty of the Parents.
The Directors of the following Institutes, Colleges and Schools subscribe to this Open Letter:
institutes
Fine Arts
Biology
computation
Economy
Language Studies
Philosophy and Human Sciences
Physics
Geosciences
Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computing
Chemistry
Colleges
Applied Sciences
pharmaceutical Sciences
Nursing
Food Engineer
Agricultural Engineering
Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urbanism
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Medical Sciences
PE
Piracicaba Dentistry
Education
Technology
Technical Schools
Campinas Technician
Limeira Technician
https://ic.unicamp.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/carta-diretores-UNICAMP-pl-529-v2.pdf