Year: 2012

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    Brown Signs Bill Offering Private Pensions (Kind of/Maybe)

    Byuclafaculty

    As readers of this blog will know, public pensions have been an issue in California and for UC.  Recently, Gov. Brown signed a bill that modified public pensions in the state – with exclusions including an exclusion for UC which modified its own plan in 2010. Democrats in the legislature believe that there would be more public sympathy for government pensions if more private sector workers had defined benefit pensions.  (Of course, most private workers are under Social Security which is defined benefit.)  Private employers, however, have been moving away from defined benefit to defined contribution (“401k-type”) plans.  So a…

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    If you are worried about the return of Carmageddon…

    Byuclafaculty

    From the LA Times: …UCLA researchers say that last year’s Carmageddon closure of the 405 Freeway rid Los Angeles of both traffic and another notorious problem: pollution.Air quality near the closed 10-mile portion of the freeway reached levels 83% better than typical weekends, according to research released Friday by a team at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.  More striking, the researchers say, air quality also improved 75% in parts of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, suggesting that whole swaths of residents stayed off the road in those areas. Overall, air quality across the region was 25% better…

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    The Thrifty Fifty Online Textbooks

    Byuclafaculty

    Governor Brown signed twin bills that create a mechanism for producing and distributing free online textbooks for what are described as fifty lower-division core courses at UC and CSU in cooperation with the community colleges. Exactly how these texts are going to be produced (for no royalties, if I read the new laws correctly) remains to be seen.  There do seem to be some mechanisms for payment for supplying such texts but, again, details are not clear. The twin bills are at:http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1051-1100/sb_1052_bill_20120905_enrolled.html andhttp://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1051-1100/sb_1053_bill_20120905_enrolled.html

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    Prop 30 and the Statue Statute

    Byuclafaculty

    Gov. Brown used the occasion of signing a bill to have a statue of Ronald Reagan in the State Capitol implicitly to promote Prop 30 – Brown’s tax initiative.  See below: LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST AB 2358, Hagman. State Capitol: Ronald Reagan statue. Existing law prescribes various duties for the Department of General Services in connection with development and maintenance of the park around the State Capitol Building. This bill would authorize the Ronald Reagan Centennial Capitol Foundation, in consultation with the Department of General Services, to plan a statue of Ronald Reagan in the State Capitol Building Annex. The bill…

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    That Feels Sooo Good

    Byuclafaculty

    The governor has signed legislation that does everything about tuition other than allocate money to stop it from rising.  It is (sort of) voluntary for the Regents and UC. And it feels so good. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST AB 970, Fong. University of California and California State University: systemwide student fees. Existing law, known as the Donahoe Higher Education Act, sets forth the missions and functions of the segments of public postsecondary education in the state. The California State University, which is governed by the Trustees of the California State University (trustees), and the University of California, which is governed by…

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    How Jerry Brown Views Higher Ed

    Byuclafaculty

    If you are wondering what Governor Brown thinks about higher ed, you might be interested in the excerpt below from the transcript of an interview with the LA Times which appeared on the web on 9-24-12: …So here’s an interesting point. This is Page Smith. He was in the history department in Santa Cruz. You went to Santa Cruz. Do you remember Page Smith? Well, he was one of the original guys. He kind of left in disgust when they started going more conventional. His wife I made the first head of the arts council and I got to know…

  • Say Again How This Is Going to Work

    Byuclafaculty

    Gov. Brown has signed the law on universities and social media.  As a prior blog post pointed out, it is unclear how subsections (a) and (c) in section (2) of the law fit together.  See the text below:=====<!–[if !mso]>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } <![endif]–> SB 1349, Yee. Social media privacy: postsecondary education. Existing law establishes and sets forth the missions and functions of the public and independent institutions of postsecondary education in the state. This bill would prohibit public and private postsecondary educational institutions, and their employees and representatives, from requiring or requesting a student, prospective student, or student group to disclose, access,…

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    Will Prop 30 Pass the Voters’ Test?

    Byuclafaculty

    As prior posts on this blog have noted, Proposition 30, the governor’s tax initiative endorsed by the Regents, is polling marginally ahead. But it does not have a comfortable lead and the campaign is really just starting.  So will it lose its marginal lead, thus causing trigger cuts to UC? Ethan Rarick, California Fellow at the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC-Berkeley, does some analysis of past initiatives and concludes that the answer is – TA TA! – maybe yes/ maybe no.  Non-tax initiatives at this point in the campaign with poll numbers in the range of Prop 30’s do…

  • A Cool Million for Pepper

    Byuclafaculty

    NPR is reporting that the settlement in the UC-Davis pepper spray case was a cool $1 million. See http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/09/26/161839245/uc-oks-1-million-settlement-in-pepper-spray-suit Update: Detail from the Sacramento Bee at:http://blogs.sacbee.com/crime/archives/2012/09/pepper-spray-settlement-about-1-million.html

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    Listen to Regents Investment Committee: 9-25-12

    Byuclafaculty

    The Regents Committee on Investments met on Sept. 25, 2012 to review investment strategies regarding the general UC endowment and the pension fund.  There was also a review of campus foundation investment policies and results.  Generally, the staff presentations involved requests to lift various constraints on investments.  Much of the explanation was that if we had more flexibility, we could have higher returns.  At one point, the presentation seemed to say that if we are constrained to emulate the benchmarks, we can’t out-perform the benchmarks.  That proposition is true, of course.  But you can’t underperform either.  If you listen to…