| |

New Tax Graveyard

Byuclafaculty

The governor and the legislative leaders have been tamping down expectations that the Democrats – with a 2/3 “supermajority” in the legislature would be enacting new taxes.  For one thing, the supermajority is shaky at best.  One Democratic seat in the Senate recently became a GOP seat in a special election.  Some of the Democrats were elected in swing districts under the new top-2 primary system and might not vote with the majority on a tax increase.

Today’s Capitol Alert blog of the Sacramento Bee reports:

Measures aimed at creating new taxes on Californians were held by the Senate Appropriations Committee today, making it extremely unlikely that taxes on cigarettes, soda, strip clubs, plastic bags or oil extraction will become law this year…

Full story at http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/05/tax-bills-fail-to-advance-out-of-california-senate-committee.html

Although there will be some debate about exactly how much revenue the state can expect in 2013-14 as the final budget is put together, it’s unlikely that revenue will be enhanced by new taxes.

And as for those tax bills:

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/05/tax-bills-fail-to-advance-out-of-california-senate-committee.html#storylink=cpy

Similar Posts

|

Report: Affordable Public Higher Education is Possible Today

Byuclafaculty

A report this week from Reclaim California Higher Education (a coalition of faculty and student groups) makes the case that affordable (even free) higher education is within reach for California. The privatization experiment has failed. The harm to a generation of hard-working, high-aiming young people is proven. It’s time to return to what works: the proven Master Plan for higher education in California. California, with its own resources, can afford to restore top-quality, accessible, affordable college and university opportunity to every qualified student. In fact, Californians can afford nothing less. You can read a summary and download the entire report…

| | |

Jerry Brown Looks for an Online Course that Requires No Human Interaction

Byuclafaculty

At the Regents meeting of January 22, 2014, Gov. Brown seems to be searching for an online course that requires no human interaction.  Such a course, he reasons, could have unlimited enrollment because it is completely self-contained.  He gets some pushback from UC Provost Dorr, who thinks courses should have such interaction.  You can hear this excerpt at the link below.  The entire meeting of the Committee on Educational Policy of the Regents was posted yesterday.[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tYFLJvrE3g?feature=player_detailpage]

| |

Jerry Brown Suggests Master Plan is Dated

Byuclafaculty

Our previous post covered the Jan. 22 meeting of the Regents’ Committee on Educational Policy.  As noted, there was discussion of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, considered a major accomplishment of Brown’s father when he was governor. Below is a link to Brown’s comments in which he suggested the Plan was now dated.  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RmjI4gVync?feature=player_detailpage]

| | | | | | |

Listen to Part of the Regents Afternoon Session of 1-22-2014

Byuclafaculty

As we have noted in numerous prior posts, the Regents refuse to archive their meetings beyond one year.  So we dutifully record the sessions in real time.  Below is a link to part of the afternoon session of Jan. 22.  This segment is mainly the Committee on Educational Policy.  Gov. Brown was in attendance.  We will separately (later) provide links just to certain Brown segments.  But for now, we provide a continuous recording. There was discussion of designating certain areas of UC-Merced as nature reserves, followed by discussion of a new telescope.  The discussion then turned to online ed and…

| | | | | | | | |

Tradition!

Byuclafaculty

The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) has issued a report on UC and CSU funding.  LAO is usually viewed as a neutral agency.  But it is a component of the legislature.  So it tends to favor approaches that add to legislative control as opposed to, say, gubernatorial control.  This report is no exception. LAO seems to want to return to what it terms the “traditional” approach to funding, but with bells and whistles added to monitor legislative goals.  The traditional approach seems to be one focused on undergraduate enrollment.  But in fact the tradition – such as it is – has…