With the government shutdown hitting the three-week mark, federal workers across the state are worried about their next paychecks.
Over 830 University of Hawaiʻi employees are at least partially paid through federal dollars, with thousands more in positions that are fully federally funded.
UH has been able to pay them with internal funds, but it costs more than $20 million a pay period — every two weeks — for the system to match their salaries.
UH President Wendy Hensel updated the Board of Regents on the current situation, stating that reimbursement for the loss of these internal funds is not guaranteed.
“The challenge really is primarily cash flow. The past practice, and certainly the statutory practice, has been to reimburse universities at the end of shutdown for any prepaid federal salary. In this case, President Trump has indicated that may not be the case,” Hensel said.
UH said there were no issues getting reimbursed after the last government shutdown ended in 2019.
Hensel said the 10-campus system can front the costs for the time being, but may have to reassess the budget if the shutdown continues past the end of October.
Vassilis Syrmos, UH’s vice president for research and innovation, stated that he is “cautiously optimistic” that the system will get reimbursed once the government reopens.
“If the government systems are not open, this will present a pretty substantial amount of cash that needs to be put aside in order to satisfy our payroll and also our expenditures every month,” Syrmos said. “But managing this cash flow on such a large amount of money is really difficult.”
Hensel will give an update on the situation at the Board of Regents meeting on Nov. 20.
