On June 27 Governor Jerry Brown vetoed language inserted by both houses that would have tied UC funding to admitting a minimum number of students (the same as last 2011).  His veto message says as follows:

 

“Deletes provision 15 of item 6440-001-0001 from AB 1497, because the requirement contained in this provision that the University achieve an enrollment target of 209,977 resident full-time equivalent students creates unnecessary cost pressures on this item and is unnecessarily restrictive.”

 

This enrollment target, identical with what it was 2 years ago (c.210K), was missing from the Governor’s January budget and the May revise. The  legislature put it back after the LAO notedits absence. Governor Brown’s veto means that, although Master Plan eligibility still exists on paper the state will no longer monitor UC’s compliance with Master Plan expectations. (In some previous years it required that fund be “reverted” to the State if UC did not meet its enrollment target.)

 

The Council of UC Faculty Association’s Executive Director, Eric Hays has been keeping track of how far the Governor has moved away from Master Plan requirements in the past three budgets. As you can see (below), Jerry Brown is MUCH worse than Schwarzenegger in holding UC to Master Plan targets. By several measures he is also worse in funding UC, which may be why he no will longer hold UC accountable Californians with non-resident students, each of whom yields a surplus revenue of c. $22K . Who will keep these accounts if the DOF and the Governor don’t?

UC remains free to enroll more the 210K resident students even if the state no longer expects it to do so.  This year’s vetoed language contained no penalty if UC missed it’s target, so the Governor’s veto should probably be read as a purely symbolic repudiation of the Master Plan’s link between UC funding and if you want a sense of where things are headed, just listen to President Yudof crow: “[The] bill included California resident enrollment target language that is not consistent with funding levels provided from the State… In accordance with my request the Governor vetoed the budget provisions on the enrollment target ….” (Yudof to Regents, June 29, 2012)

On Friday, June 30, Eric Hays and Joe Kiskis (CUCFA’s VP for External Relations) attended a meeting at UCOP in which the likely outlines of the Governor’s  compact with Yudof were revealed. Joe reports as follows:

In the event that Brown’s ballot initiative does pass, the governor has promised to dust off the multi-year (4-year? 5-year?) UC funding agreement that was apparently worked out between OP and the Governor during the spring and has since been on hold. The present version of this has a 6%/yr increase in state support for UC. That is the 4% previously rumored plus 2% for UCRP. In that eventuality, OP would likely ask the Regents for a 6%/yr tuition increase. (You read that right.) In the event that the ballot initiative does not pass, OP will probably ask the Regents for a tuition increase sufficient to make up for the $250M trigger, the lost $125M tuition buy out, and some other increasing fixed costs for a total increase of 20.3% to be effective Jan. 1, 2013. Yes, mid-year.

But with without any stated expectations for California UC will be free to replace in-state students with non-residents, thereby reducing the budgetary quality of education at campuses that continue to honor the Master Plan. (See https://calitics.com/diary/… )

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Here is relevant language from the last three state budgets as compiled by Eric Hays:

 

2010-11 (Schwarzenegger’s last): “The Legislature expects the University of California to enroll a total of 209,977 statesupported FTES during the 2010-11 academic year. This enrollment target does not include nonresident students and students enrolled in nonstate-supported summer programs.

The University of California shall report to the Legislature by March 15, 2011, on whether it has met the 2010-11 academic year enrollment goal. For purposes of this provision, enrollment totals shall only include state-supported students. If the University of California does not meet its total state supported enrollment goal by at least 512 FTES, the Director of Finance shall revert to the General Fund by April 1, 2011, the total amount of enrollment funding associated with the total share of the enrollment goal that was not met.” (page 604-605 of

http://www.documents.dgs.ca.go…

 

2011-12 (Brown’s first): “The Director of Finance shall not [emphasis added] revert state funds appropriated to the University of California for the 2011-12 fiscal year pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 59 of Chapter 7 of the Statutes of 2011 even if the university does not meet its total state-supported enrollment goal.” (page 602 of

http://www.documents.dgs.ca.go…

 

2012-13 (VETOED): “The Legislature expects the University of California to enroll a total of 209,977 state-support-ed full time equivalent students during the 2012-13 academic year. This enrollment target does not include nonresident students and students enrolled in nonstate supported summer programs. The University of California shall report to the Legislature by May 1, 2013, on whether it has met the 2012-13 academic year enrollment goal.”

State’s largest union agrees to big pay cuts

by Brian Leubitz

Times aren’t good for state workers these days, and the Governor’s budget wasn’t really good for anybody. After all, the deficit required massive cuts.  However, one of the components of the budget was a pay cut for state workers. And yesterday, he actually got some of the necessary buy-in from labor.

As a vote nears on the final details of a 2012-13 budget, Gov. Jerry Brown has persuaded leaders of the state’s largest public employee union to agree to a key portion of his plan to reduce state spending, a nearly 5 percent pay cut. (SF Chronicle)

There’s no way around the fact that this is really terrible. Workers shouldn’t have to be working backward on the ladder up, but that’s where we are. At some point we have to change this zero-sum game.

However, perhaps that can start with higher education.

The governor wasn’t the only one to get a win this weekend. The budget plan now includes a guarantee that tuition at the University of California and California State University systems won’t increase this year or next year – with a caveat.

Holding tuition flat, which will cost the state $125 million for each system, is contingent on voter approval of Brown’s November ballot measure to raise taxes. If voters reject the initiative, both systems face a $250 million cut.(SF Chronicle)

Obviously, there is still a huge IF here. The Governor’s measure is skating that delicate line, and it is far from guaranteed that the measure will pass. However, our stellar education system is a big part of what made California great. We can’t continue to turn our backs on it, hoping the private sector will pick up the slack. It won’t and we’ll be left in a far less competitive position than we were at the height of the Master Plan.

Anti-tax groups get ready for big push in November

by Brian Leubitz

While President Obama won’t be spending a lot of time here in October, you can bet there will be a lot of money spent here.  With the Special Exemptions Act, the death penalty, several contested Congressional seats and the Governor’s revenue measure on the ballot, it will be a busy campaign season. But for Howard Jarvis’ corpse, it will be the same ol’ same ol. It’s what they do every day, slam the goverment, tell them how  terrible it is and bam, there you go.

There, at a news conference to announce the formation of “Californians for Reforms and Jobs, not Taxes,” Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, previewed the campaign against the governor’s November ballot initiative to raise taxes. It will rely on messages, he said, that “quite frankly, are short and sweet.”

Brown’s opponents, Coupal said, will remind Californians of the state’s relatively high tax burden, challenge the Democratic governor’s claim that his tax increase is for schools and publicize unflattering examples of government spending.(SacBee)

Of course, take any large organization and you can find some dumb stuff going on. And, the California government is such and organization. But, just because there is a small stupid thing going on, doesn’t mean that we should just toss the big, smart things that go on every day. Like, you know, educating our children, maintaining our streets, and so on. California government is simply too big to fail.

Yet, that is where we are headed. With the continued pessimism and me-first attitudes of the anti-tax organizations, we are stuck on a 20th century budget in a 21st century reality. We have neither the flexibility nor the wherewithal to continue with budget disaster after budget disaster. And, yeah, the current budget is a mess.

The governor’s measure doesn’t fix that, and doesn’t totally save the budget, but it is a step that we must take.

At the University of California’s request, the Governor’s budget proposes to:

1. Shift $2.5 billion of existing state-supported debt onto the University of California’s books for capital projects paid for through State Lease Revenue Bonds.

2. Let UC take on more debt without legislative oversight in the future.

UC management’s proposal would kill essential state oversight of borrowing and take unnecessary risks that would leave taxpayers and students on the hook.  By rolling $2.5 billion of existing state-supported debt into UC’s budget, UC’s Wall Street management executives claim they could use the University’s superior credit rating to refinance the debt and save money this year.  In fact, UC’s credit rating is only a notch higher than the State of California’s.

Under this proposal, UC would be allowed without Legislative approval or even notification, to use General Fund dollars for any capital projects, not just to pay debt on the restructured bonds.

That hotel UC is pushing for at UCLA? Paid for with your tax dollars!

An additional financial burden of $2.5 billion in outstanding debt would put a squeeze on UC’s budget at a time when programs and jobs are being cut. It would also allow UC to take on even more debt without Legislative oversight. Transferring repayment of state-supported debt currently paid by the State to UC would not shield UC from future market volatility. Higher interest rates could increase debt service costs and divert already limited funds away from normal operating costs and core academic programs.

Runaway Debt Creates Pressure On Budget

Greater debt, future market volatility, and rising interest rates could create pressure on a limited pot of money. Higher education debt service costs in CA have already doubled in a decade, from $516 million in 2000 to $1.1 billion in 2010. Without adequate Legislative oversight, UC would be at risk for runaway debt.

If this is so bad for California’s taxpayers why is this still on the table?

This is a good question for Governor Brown and his staff. His office is the only current entity pushing this privatization bill. Anyone with any policy sense who reads the proposal sees immediate red flags. Anyone who remembers the Enron scandal or who has suffered at the hands of Wall Street over Main Street can see that this is a bad idea for all of California’s taxpayers.

Call the Governor and tell him no to UC’s debt privatization 916-445-2841 Tweet him at @JerryBrownGov #CABudget  

By Wendy Lazarus, Founder, The Children’s Partnership

As we head into that time of year when our young people are graduating from high-school

and college, many commencement speeches will acknowledge the sacrifices many parents make to ensure their children succeed. Imagine how much more difficult that becomes when a child requires medical care and his or her parents are unable to access a doctor or health care coverage. As legislative leaders and the Governor wrestle over budget decisions to decide the fate of children who rely on Healthy Families, our state’s moms and dads deserve someone to stand up for them.

In a recent Capitol Weekly piece, I described the details of how health care for nearly a million California kids hangs in the balance as the Legislature completes its budget deliberations, which includes the Governor’s proposal to close the doors of the Healthy Families Program. The Legislature has an opportunity to pass what the Assembly and Senate Budget Subcommittees did: keep all kids, except those required by the ACA to move to the Medi-Cal program, in the Healthy Families Program. By any measure, Healthy Families is highly successful. California children who are newly enrolled in Healthy Families have been shown to have a nearly 63% improvement in performance and paying attention in class. Studies also show Healthy Families has substantially improved kids’ access to needed health care and produced meaningful improvements in their physical, mental, and social well-being.

The Governor plans to transfer nearly one million children in Healthy Families into California’s already overstretched Medi-Cal program over a brief nine-month period, starting in October 2012. Not only does it leave the Medi-Cal program inadequate time to prepare to receive so many new kids and get them set up properly in a new health care program, but families are already facing difficulties finding a doctor or dentist who will take their kids under Medi-Cal. So Medi-Cal needs more time to shore up the network of doctors for the children it already serves before stretching its capacity to add almost 900,000 more children. This is not the time to move nearly a million children from Healthy Families.

Instead of this overreach that could undermine the progress made in promoting healthy kids, a common sense, alternative approach is recommended by over 40 organizations. We recommend a more gradual shift, moving 200,000 Healthy Families kids into Medi-Cal-those kids who, based on the new federal health reform law, will be enrolled in Medi-Cal with their families by January 2014.

Last week, Governor Brown released a May revision to his budget proposal that ignored recommendations for an incremental approach. These huge disruptions to health care programs for nearly a million children do not even produce significant budget savings, so why put these children at risk? Any parent sending their graduates off to their future knows that being a parent is a tough job, 365 days a year. Today’s parents should not face a lack of access to health care for their children. The Governor and Legislators should protect the children covered in Healthy Families AND help parents and the families that rely on them to have healthier–and more secure– lives.

Wendy Lazarus, Founder & Co-President of The Children’s Partnership, has been an advocate for children, nationally and in California, for more than three decades.

Increased budget deficit means big cuts with or without tax initiatives

by Brian Leubitz

With the recent announcement of a bigger than expected deficit, Gov. Brown has announced bigger than expected cuts are coming in his May revision of the budget.

The gap grew, the budget revision states, because Brown over-estimated tax revenues by $4.3 billion and the federal government and courts blocked $1.7 billion in cuts the state wanted to make. The remainder of the difference reflects an increase in the amount of money the state is mandated to spend on education under a complex voter-approved formula.

To close the wider gap, Brown has heightened the cuts he wants to make to Medi-Cal, to $1.2 billion, and maintained another $1.2 billion in welfare and child-care savings he proposed in January.

He also wants to slash payments to people who care for the disabled by 7% and reduce the state payroll through a shorter workweek or wage concessions. He proposed $500 million in cuts to the state’s struggling court system, including a one-year freeze on all new construction projects.(LA Times)

That’s just the best case scenario there. As horrendous as that may be, if the tax measure in November doesn’t pass, Brown is set to do a triggered cut of $5.5 billion and $3b other cuts.  

At this point, the waste is gone. We are cutting vital services that won’t just magically reappear when times get better. We are fundamentally changing how we treat each other, and we are letting social darwinism run amok. It’s a tragedy of immense proportions, and no saviors are riding in from the horizon.

Brown appears on Face the Nation, calls GOP “reactionary”

by Brian Leubitz

Jerry Brown is not quite on par with Arnold Schwarzenegger on the national pronouncement front. However, he does like to share a view or two with the nation. As Governor of the nation’s most populous state, it seems appropriate that he say a few words about what is going on in DC.  And, as anyone can see, it’s a mess, and Jerry Brown is only saying what is obvious for all to see: (video here)

“I think the Republicans have to move out of that reactionary cul-de-sac that some of the more extreme members are pushing them,” Brown told host Bob Schieffer.

“There’s an enforcement of discipline that’s ideological and, as was mentioned today in The Washington Post, takes on the quality of a cult,” the California governor said.

Brown provided one example of Republican ideology, on immigration. The party largely opposes a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally.

“They’re so hostile to millions and millions of people in this country, and while they can’t vote, they have millions and millions of people who they’re related to or who identify with them. And you just can’t ignore 12 million people, particularly when they’re picking our food, they’re working in the hotels and restaurants, and now they’re increasingly in very important jobs,” Brown said.

But Brown, who is 74 years old and has been in the political realm for more than 40 years, criticized the entire political system, which he calls “more polarized” than he’s ever seen it.(Face The Nation)

On that note, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann have a new book, for which they were interviewed on Morning Edition today that essentially calls out the media for trying to play “balanced” over facts. Yes both parties have issues, but one is a more clear and present danger to the long-term stability of the nation.

“One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition,” they write in their new book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.

The media rarely acknowledges this fact, but the radicals in almost every issue today, are the Republicans. On sexual freedom, it is the Republicans who want to limit access to birth control. On regulation of the banks, it is the Republicans who want to return to a reckless capitalism that has now been thoroughly discredited. And on our social safety net, the Republicans want to so decimate it that our homeless populations will continue to spike.

Good on Gov. Brown for calling them out, and as he did so, acknowledging that he isn’t perfect, and that he can’t simply overturn what the GOP has created with their superminority. In our system of democracy, repairing government takes time. In many ways, it is unfortunate, but you work with the government you’ve got, I suppose.

Over at CapAlert, find a 1979 interview with a much younger Gov. Jerry Brown. Also, Mayor Villaraigosa also appeared in the full episode video here discussing the national political environment.

As a recent graduate of San Francisco State University, I am thrilled that there is finally momentum gaining in the movement to achieve real public higher education reform in California. In particular, the Middle Class Scholarship Act is an economically feasible way to make public higher education more affordable for all Californians.

California’s public college students are continuing to struggle. The CSU Board of Trustees’ recent decision to close Spring 2013 enrollment is just one of the devastating blows that our public higher education students have been forced to endure, with no end in sight.

Luckily, help for California’s public university students and their families could be on the way. The Middle Class Scholarship Act recently proposed by California State Assembly Speaker John A. Perez is exactly the kind of public higher education reform that California’s students and their families need in these difficult financial times.

If it is approved by two-thirds of the California State Legislature, the Middle Class Scholarship Act will provide scholarships to approximately 150,000 CSU students and roughly 42,000 UC students who have family incomes less than $150,000 and whom do not already have their fees covered. These Middle Class Scholarships will slash student fees by two-thirds. Additionally, our California Community Colleges will receive $150 million to address their unique needs. The Middle Class Scholarships will be paid for in full by closing a wasteful corporate loophole that only benefits out-of-state businesses.  

The Middle Class Scholarship is an innovative solution to California’s public higher education crisis that will help students achieve their dreams, while at the same time, ensure that our Golden State has a strong workforce that is prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century economy.

I know that as a student, it is difficult just to make time to study and to work but I strongly urge all of California’s UC, CSU and Community College Students to do whatever they can to help pass the Middle Class Scholarship Act and to fight for the higher education reform they deserve. From signing and sharing this petition and tweeting and posting Facbook messages to your State legislators and Governor Brown (if you don’t know who your State legislators are, you can look them up here) to organizing on campus and gathering signatures, no action is too small or insignificant. Keep the faith and, most importantly, keep making your voices heard.

If California’s public college students continue to come together and rally the support of our State legislators to pass the Middle Class Scholarship Act, I think we will finally see the dawn of real public higher education reform in California.