AB 656, authored by Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, would have established an oil and gas severance tax (California being the only oil and gas producing state in the union not having one) and earmarked the proceeds for puiblic higher education, giving our universities a financial base upon which to operate and easing the burden on the general fund.

On Thursday, the Assembly Appropriations Committee took action on it that essentially defeats the bill for this legislative cycle. The committee deleted the oil and gas severance tax portion of the bill and replaced it with a simple reporting requirement. The amendments require the state Board of Equalization to annually report to the legislature the amount of revenue that would be generated for public higher education if the oil and gas tax was implemented.

Maybe it can be resurrected as we get closer to trying to deal with this year’s budget problems, especially since the Governor has placed a high priority on helping the CSU’s and UC’s recoup some of their cuts.  This could be the way top offset the Governor’s political shenanigans of trying to play off higher education unions against the prison unions.  

Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project.

 Introduction:

Tomorrow at noon, pickets will spring up on every campus of the University, a familiar sight especially since the U.C regents decided to raise undergraduate tuition by 32% this fall. This time, it’s PRO-UAW (the union for post-doctoral scholars or “post-docs”) and UPTE (the union for research and technical workers) who are protesting the U.C’s stonewalling contract negotiations over wages and benefits.

Lest anyone mistake this picket as just one more expression of discontent at the U.C’s budget woes, let me point out an important fact that shows why this protest shows how both sides of the U.C’s mission as a public research university are being undermined by the Regents’ drive towards privatization: these workers are being paid through Federal grants, not from the U.C’s general budget.

So why would the U.C refuse to pay for cost-of-living increases and benefit improvements when the money isn’t coming out of their funds?

The U.C Playing The Thimble Game:

People who’ve been following the news know that the U.C’s in budget trouble and took an $800 million cut from the state legislature this year. What they might not know is that at the same time, the U.C has been raking in Federal grant money hand-over-fist: UCLA’s researchers, for example, have been winning grants at the rate of $4 million a day in 2009, exceeding the 2008 rate that saw the U.C pull in nearly three billion in Federal research grants in Fiscal Year 2008-9. The reason that the U.C is flush with Federal grants is that the Federal stimulus and Obama’s first budget greatly increased Federal spending on research in order to create the kinds of good jobs in high-tech and research and development that we need to pull America out of the recession.

Despite taking this grant money from the Federal government, the U.C is refusing to spend money in the labs to provide cost-of-living adjustments (cost of living adjustments which are already budgeted for under the grants) and decent health care to front-line researchers and technical staff, the same people whose work is winning the U.C this grant money. Those wage adjustments and health benefits would act exactly as the kind of economic stimulus that was intended when Congress passed the stimulus back in 2008, boosting the local economies of each of the 10 U.C campuses.

In essence, the U.C is acting just like the banks and the state of California- instead of using Federal funds to ease the foreclosure crisis or prevent public sector job cuts, they’re crying poverty and refusing to stimulate the economy. The U.C’s bargaining team has been arguing that the state’s cut to the U.C means that researchers should shoulder the burden of wage freezes and health benefit cuts, in the same way that a con man running the thimble game tries to distract you when they palm the pea that’s supposed to be under one of the three thimbles. U.C researchers are paid out of grants, not state funds, and grant money is abundant and includes money for cost-of-living adjustments.

What makes the U.C’s stonewalling even more illogical is that by law that grant money can’t be spent to make up for the U.C’s state budget cuts. Either it gets spent in the lab or it doesn’t get spent. Thus, not only is the U.C’s penny-pinching hurting the California economy, but it’s also damaging the U.C’s purpose as a public (research) university.

The Purpose of a Public (Research) University:

When Yudof and the rest of the Regents approved a 32% tuition hike for U.C students, they couched it as an unpleasant necessity in order to “preserve and nurture our world-class public research university system.” And yet at the same time, the U.C is refusing to use Federal grant money to support its researchers.

What this points to is that the Regents aren’t interested in preserving either of the two purposes of a public (research) university – namely to promote the general welfare of the people through providing free higher education to anyone who wants to learn, and to promote the general welfare by doing research and develop that improves people’s lives by creating new technologies and new industries. These two priorities should go hand in hand, especially when Federal funding means that wage increases for researchers doesn’t have to raise student tuition by a dime.

Rather, what the Regents want is a privatized model of a university where no worker is paid a living wage or receives decent benefits. The only reason the U.C could have for playing “dog in the manger” to the post-docs and research workers is that they don’t want to create a precedent of giving any U.C worker a wage increase or decent health care, lest other groups of workers demand the same treatment.

If anybody doubted that the tombstone on the Master Plan has been thoroughly and completely written, here’s one more (unnecessary) piece of evidence:

A University of California Board of Regents committee today approved a series of controversial increases in student fees that, if passed by the full board, will raise UC undergraduate education costs by more than $2,500, or 32%, in two steps by fall 2010.

The finance committee vote is expected to be endorsed by the full Board of Regents on Thursday. The two-day meeting is being held at UCLA, where today’s session has been marked by raucous protests with at least 14 arrests.

The first step of the fee hike, costing undergraduates an additional $585, will take effect in January. Next fall, students will see another $1,344 increase, bringing the UC education fees to $10,302, along with about $1,000 in campus-based charges. That does not include room, board and books, which can add another $16,000. (LAT 11/18/09)

Add this on top of the fact that CalGrants was substantially cut in the last round of budget negotiations and might be outright eliminated to solve the next budget crisis, and you have a system that is only accessible to all but the wealthiest students.

It is just one more sad day on our well-worn road to mediocrity.

UPDATE:  Here’s the direct link to the survey.

A while back Dave Dayen wrote about the Two Santa Claus Theory and its effect on California governance, and today we get just one more data point to illustrate the general point of what the theory has done to the state. Californians want lots of services, but want somebody else to pay for them.

In today’s PPIC poll, we get the data that 70% of Californians are opposed to state budget cuts and increased fees for the state’s higher education system. Nonetheless majorities still find that the systems, UC, CSU, and the community colleges, as “good”. So, despite the cuts, they are still getting good marks.

The paradox of this whole thing comes in the area of paying to keep the doors open.  Thus the cake reference:

In the context of the state budget situation, most Californians place a very high (26%) or high (33%) priority on spending for public higher education, which at $12.2 billion is the third-largest area of spending in the budget. But residents split along partisan lines, with 67 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents putting a very high or high priority on spending in this area, compared to 42 percent of Republicans. The same percentage of Republicans (42%) puts a medium priority on higher education spending.

Given the high value that most Californians place on spending for higher education, what would they be willing to do to offset state spending cuts?

   * 68 percent are unwilling to increase student fees. Solid majorities across parties, regions, and demographic groups concur.

   * 56 percent are unwilling to pay higher taxes. Although 56 percent of Democrats are willing to pay higher taxes for this purpose, 58 percent of independents and 74 percent of Republicans are not.

   * 53 percent would support a higher education construction bond measure on the 2010 ballot. But support is lower among likely voters (46% yes, 47% no) for this hypothetical bond measure and would fall short of the simple majority threshold needed to pass such a measure. Here, too, a partisan split emerges, with 61 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents saying they would vote yes on a bond and 55 percent of Republicans saying they would vote no.

There are recognitions here that fees are too high and that we need to preserve access. And Californians seem to understand just how important higher education really is to our future economy.  However, there is just some sort of disconnect between having good schools and paying for good schools.

This is the wage of the Two Santa Claus Theory, that we could have lots of services and have lots of tax cuts, and everything would be great.

Yet, if the state isn’t broken already, as Robert has consistently and persuasively argued, the state is clearly ready to collapse under the expectations of something for nothing. Yes, getting revenue for higher ed spending and other spending priorities will be difficult, and perhaps we’ll lose some elections because progressives dare to speak of the essential paradox in California governance since 1978.

However, this is critical to our future. And winning elections is only so important as retaining actual power. If progressive hands are tied and we are able to only preside over the collapse, what’s the prize there? Who wants to win just to be the government that saw the state’s quality of life decrease. Progressive candidates and campaigns need to clearly articulate a vision for the future where California is a better state nine years from now than it is today. If we can’t do that, what’s really the point?  

It’s been a long time, nearly 50 years, since Governor Pat Brown‘s vision for California brought us what was so frequently dubbed the “California Dream.”  We had infrastructure that rivaled if not exceeded any in the world. We had a strong social safety net that enabled Californians to pursue careers in the burgeoning middle class. And we had the “Master Plan for Higher Education” that promised highly subsidized education for those Californians that met a basic set of requirments, and shut nobody out.

At the heart of the Master Plan, were the community colleges.  The community colleges allowed students who underperformed at high schools to get back on track for a higher degree. They were to be plentiful, high-quality, and cheap. The state was going to kick in 35-40% of the operating revenue, with a bunch of additional funding coming from the county level.  You may think that strange given the way the state works today, but back then, pre-Prop 13, counties actually had their own sources of revenue.  They could rely on the property taxes and other local taxes to provide opportunities to fund programs like the community colleges.

The community colleges were then to feed in to the newly upgraded UC and CSU systems.  At the time, UC was already on of the world’s leading research systems.  CSU would soon grow to take a very important “middle” place for students.  It was originally intended for only bachelor’s and master’s degrees, with the doctarates being issued at the UC campuses.  The various CSU campuses would focus on teacher certification and other public service functions, with the UC doing the bulk of the top-flight research. (Photo Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

And all of this was going to be free for Californians.  It was an investment in the future, and it paid off, big-time.  The quality graduates that came out of this public education system helped to grow the California economy at a pace far outstripping the rest of the nation.  Some like to call the 20th Century the American Century, well, if that was true, the last half of the 20th Century was the California Century.

But like all good centuries, they come to an end.  And with the election of Ronald Reagan, and later Deukmejian and Wilson, and to an extent, even Brown’s son Jerry, the Master Plan has been gradually chipped away.  As we stand right now, of the approximately $18 Billion UC budget, around $3 Billion now comes from the state.

All this is made even more evident today as a Mass Walkout is occuring on all of the UC campuses from San Diego all the way up to Davis, students, faculty, and staff are walking out on classes to picket the university and its administration.  And the administration is facing some tough questions of its own, particularly relating to admistrative bloat.

The latest blow to the system is the loss of about $110 million that the community colleges had been expecting from the stimulus bill. Unfortunately, the draw down requirements were not met by our 2009 budget, so those federal dollars go unspent as the community colleges cut classes and limit enrollment, a bitter irony when compared to their original goal of being the “open door” for California students.

But when you look at what used to be the grand scheme for California higher education, you can see the problem is far greater than any administrative bloat or lack of stimu-bux can really address.  While trying not to look like an apologist, instead of pointing the finger at Yudof and crew, we should be looking to Arnold and his Republican predecessors and cohorts.  

We have destroyed what was once the envy of the world, and are hard at work turning it in to nothing better than a mid-level private education system.  At least when you head to the Farm down in Palo Alto, you know you are going to get high fees and tuition. With the UC’s students are left in limbo, thinking they were going to get an affordable education.  I’ll leave you with the words of one of my professors at Berkeley, George Lakoff:

Lakoff, UC Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and author of several popular and scholarly books on the language of politics, said in a letter to UCB’s Townsend Center that “the privatization issue goes well beyond public education. It is about whether we have a democracy that works for the common good, or a plutocracy that privileges the wealthy and powerful. Privatizing the world’s greatest public university is a giant step away from democracy.”(Berkeley Daily Planet 9/17/09

I apologize if this is a topic that’s been posted on before, but a quick search came up with nothing.  So here I go.

I moved to California just over a year ago, fresh out of a liberal arts school with a degree that I thought would help get me a job.  I didn’t find a good solid one until March this year, when I went to work at UC San Diego.

There’s a lot to love about working for UC.  I got a pretty comprehensive benefits package — which I’m pretty relieved about, given everything that’s going on in the healthcare world right now.  I’m in the scientific field that I wanted to be, and I’m assisting with some cutting-edge research (albeit more on the administrative side than anything else).  I have decent job security, as my boss has told me that I’m doing a good job and he’d like me to keep doing more of the same.  Which is all one can hope for in this economy.

But my job at UCSD just got a lot less wonderful with the Board of Regents’ announcement about their cost saving measures.

First, the facts.  Most of the full-time equivalent positions at UCSD are having furloughs applied to them.  For those of you who don’t know what they are (as I didn’t before it happened), furloughs are basically forced unpaid vacations which translate to a pay cut.  Every salaried employee is subject to this.  This includes me — and when my fiance is worrying about layoffs at his company, it makes me worry even more.

I know that everywhere is tough, and there are cutbacks everywhere you look.  But when is the last time that responsible, fiscally conservative people like my boss had 8% pay cuts?  We’re not one of the big banks that

Even if my salary is adjusted for inflation, I’ll be making less money than I did at the beginning of my job here.  While I know that I am lucky to have a job at all, it is still something that concerns me a lot.  How long until my boss can’t fund me at all?  My job is a fairly critical one towards running a lab, but what if he decides to jump ship and go to China?  This is a fairly real possibility.  He already mentioned that there were standing offers from places in China that match salaries over here.  And he’s upset that because of the depth of his pay cut, he might have to mortgage his house again.

You might think that a professor has a cushy job.  You might think that academia is an easy place to work.  It’s not.  My job is challenging, and extremely instructive.  I’m literally learning new things every day.  There are so many things that go on behind the scenes that most people have no idea even exist.  I could write another full diary on these things, but I’m focusing on the budget cuts here.

It likely won’t come to a shock to most CSU students, but they will be seeing higher bills next semester.  Not only did Chancellor Charles reed ask the trustees for a 20% fee increase, but he also indicated that he would be looking for ways to save money throughout the system. That means furloughs, more classes taught by less expensive “lecturers,” and fewer office hours.

Of course, if you were cynical, you could point out that fee increases seemingly always happen in the summer, when must students are away from their campus.  So, it is harder for students to organize.  However, that doesn’t mean that students will simply lie down. Steve Dixon, president of the California State Student Association plans on making sure the Chancellor and the Legislators hear from students.  

“We’re very upset,” Dixon said. “Every time Sacramento can’t balance the books, we students end up bearing the financial responsibility. But we’re not getting an increase in quality. We’ll see increased class sizes, fewer courses and fewer teachers of Ph.D. quality. Worse, we’ll also see tens of thousands of students denied access.” (SF Chronicle 7/17/09)

Both state university systems have been making huge cutbacks, and this will hit employees extremely hard. It is unfortunate that despite the fact that Californians want to ensure that we have quality higher education, Far-Right Legislators use the system to once again block wise fiscal and education policay.

The SF Chronicle has a good list of some of the impacts of the budget crisis upon the systems.

Peter Schrag is one of the few columnists left in this state who consistently makes sense, and today he attacks that silly NYTimes article about California, in particular the elements of conventional wisdom:

In his passing references to California’s serious issues, many of which have major implications for the nation as a whole, Leibovich collects pieces of the conventional wisdom, even when, as in his facile summary of the causes of gridlock in Sacramento, it’s wrong. Since Democrats have again and again agreed to multi-billion dollar cuts, it is not, as he thinks, just a matter of “‘no more taxes’ (Republicans) and ‘no more cuts’ (Democrats).”

And while Jerry Brown, in his prior tenure as governor was indeed labeled “Governor Moonbeam” (by a Chicago columnist) for his space proposals, as Leibovich says, the label applied much more broadly to his inattention to the daily duties of his office and, most particularly to his dithering while the forces that produced Proposition 13 began to roll.

Brown later acknowledged that he didn’t have the attention span to focus on the property tax reforms that were then so urgently needed to avert the revolt of 1978. But to this day, almost no one has said much of Brown’s role in creating the anti-government climate and resentments that helped fuel the Proposition 13 drive.

It was the Brown, echoing much of the 1970s counter-culture, who, as much as anyone, was poor-mouthing the schools and universities as failing their students and who threatened to cut their funding if they didn’t shape up. It is Brown who spent most of his political career savaging politics and politicians, even as he ran for yet another office. Now this is the guy who wants to be governor again. But Leibovich doesn’t tell his readers that long history. Maybe he doesn’t know it.

The line about how those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it can be inserted here.  But Schrag hits on the most important failing of the article, and indeed of a good chunk of the political media here in California – they airbrush out the people who suffer for the failures of the politicians.

Where are California and the people who are feeling the pain – the school kids and teachers in hopelessly underfunded schools, the children who are losing their health care, the minimum-wage working mothers struggling to pay their child care, the students who are losing their university grants? Is all this really about nothing?

To far too many, the answer is yes.  It’s politics as theater, as a sporting event, where winners and losers are checked on a board, and whether or not a leader will keep their position is made the story rather than the principles he or she represents.  And yet it’s not Governor Hot Tubs and Stogies who will feel the pain of an economic downturn and massive budget cuts, nor well-heeled consultants or columnists who make up the scorecards.  It’s people.

People like the students in the Cal State system who may see their fees raised 20%, just months after a 10% hike approved in May.  This will effectively block higher education for a non-trivial number of students, as will proposed enrollment reductions of 32,000 students.

People like LA County homeowners who have defaulted at twice the rate in May as they have in the previous month, as a foreclosure backlog builds up due to various moratoriums and an increase in repossessed homes entering the market.

People like IOU holders who may have to turn to check-cashing stores to get less-than-full value for their registered warrants after Friday, when most major banks (who have all been bailed out by the federal government, by the way) stop the exchange of the notes.

And people like the elderly, disabled and blind, who rely on the in-home support services that the Governor is trying to illegally cut in contravention of a contempt-of-court citation, at least in Fresno.

These are the great unmentioned in this California crisis, the people who Dan Walters tries to smear in his column today by turning every Democratic concern for the impacts of policy as a sellout to “public employee unions.”  Behind those unions are workers, and the people they serve need the help the provide, in many cases, simply to survive.  But it would be too dangerous to Walters’ beautiful mind to consider those faces, so he chooses to make political hay out of the violation of people.

This is the point of the People’s Day of Reckoning Coalition.  They refuse to have their existence denied any longer.

…THE Jerry Brown commented in Schrag’s post:

Mr. Schrag’s latest screed is a good example of why politics in Sacramento is so dis-functional. Instead of trying to find the truth in the Leibovich article, he mocks both the writer and each of the subjects. In recent years, Schrag has become increasingly bitter. That’s very sad because he once was an open-minded person with real insight into the predicaments of modern society. Finally, his memory is not serving him well regarding Propistion 13 and the factors that constituted the ethos of that period. In fact, there was a long and hard fought battle to get property tax relief that got all the way to the state Senate but foundered just short of the necessary two thirds vote. There is much to say about government, schools and taxation in California. But to get anywhere it requires a degree of empathy and engagement with opposing perspectives that no longer seems congenial to Mr. Schrag.

Posted by: Jerry Brown at July 8, 2009 08:41 AM

Wow.