Another Pepper Apology? Let’s Focus Instead on the UC Budget

Below is video of the chancellor’s apology. A story about it is at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/22/MNK71M2548.DTL

As noted in last night’s blog post, instead of trying to regain “control” via crisis management techniques, it would be nice if the Regents and the powers-that-be at UC focused instead on the ongoing UC budget emergency. Please see last night’s blog posting for a link to the UCLA Faculty Association’s position – as expressed to the Regents – back in 2009 on the budget emergency:

For example, UC needs the legislature and governor to step up and take some responsibility for funding the UC pension system. No immediate state cash is needed; an IOU from the state – as was done back in the days when the state did take its responsibility seriously – would be helpful to UC. Under the current arrangement – in which the state has decided it never heard of the UC pension system – from every dollar that the state gives to UC for its core academic operations, there must be a subtraction to fund the pension. That situation does not exist at CSU (which is under CalPERS). Whether anyone intends it or not, the result of current state policy (or non-policy) will be a slow-moving and unspoken privatization of UC. The Regents can’t collect taxes. They control only tuition as a revenue source. Every dollar that should go into the pension plan on behalf of the state, but does not, costs the plan $2 in contributions from non-state sources.

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As has been pointed out ad nauseum, the lack of state funding for the UC pension is not an old folks or retiree issue. It is a young folks issue, since it taxes the limited budget appropriation the state does provide for core academic programs.

Update: Latest tweet:

There may not be a tuition item but there are budget items:

Update: Legislature schedules hearing on UC’s use of police