politics

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Pro and Con

Byuclafaculty

In a TV interview airing today, Assembly Speaker John Pérez managed to be both pro and con the appointment of Janet Napolitano as the new president of UC.  He was against the search process which he said was not open enough.  On the other hand, due to what he said was luck despite the bad process, UC has ended up with an “incredibly talented” executive.  The fact that she has a political background, Pérez said, didn’t have anything to do with regental concerns about interventions by the governor and legislature in UC affairs.  He said he had had concerns about…

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Pay for the New UC Prez: Mellowing Newsom Likes It

Byuclafaculty

Gov. Brown is out of the country and missed yesterday’s Regents meeting and won’t be at the meeting today.  At the meeting scheduled for later today, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom might well attend.  In the past, he has been against high pay for UC executives.  But now he seems to have mellowed in the case of Janet Napolitano, the nominee for UC president.  The Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert blog indicates that Newsom thinks the pay in store for Napolitano is OK: …UC has not yet revealed how much Napolitano will be paid. That information will be made public tomorrow after…

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One columnist wants the new UC prez to give the state’s politicos a tough going over

Byuclafaculty

Most of the commentary about the nomination of Janet Napolitano as the new UC president has been about the candidate or the selection process.  Joe Mathews in contrast thinks she should use her homeland security background to be tough with the state’s political establishment and has this advice for her: …Your focus needs to be changing the reality that the UC has a very minority partner – the state government, which provides only a fraction of its resources – that has majority authority over the system. You need to present the legislature with a stark choice. Either ramp up public…

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More Scanning of Napolitano’s Appointment

Byuclafaculty

The nomination of Janet Napolitano – former head of Homeland Security and thus TSA and immigration – to be the new UC president will probably get a reasonably full going over at the Regents this week – although yours truly thinks the fix is in as far as confirming the appointment goes.  Chancellor Block evidently agrees with that assessment.  From the Daily Bruin today: …Several public figures such as President Barack Obama, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John McCain, Gov. Jerry Brown and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block expressed their congratulations and support Friday following Napolitano’s nomination……

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Can’t say enough

Byuclafaculty

While the governor held his tongue (see our prior post) yesterday, the new Berkeley chancellor just couldn’t find enough words of praise for state politicos in an LA Times op ed:…I applaud the California Legislature and the leadership of Speaker John A. Pérez for the bold effort to make UC and California State University attendance far more affordable through the new Middle Class Scholarship Plan. The plan will reduce tuition costs by 10% to 40% for students from families with household earnings between $100,000 and $150,000…Full op ed at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-dirks-uc-tuition-20130712,0,2189269.story Flattery will get you somewhere (presumably):[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dvA-wmVPrM?feature=player_detailpage]

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Reconcile Yourself to the State Budget

Byuclafaculty

You might as well reconcile yourself because you won’t find a reconciliation from any official source between the governor’s accrual budget (released in late June) and the state controller’s cash budget (released today). In theory, there are advantages to accrual accounting over cash accounting in judging performance, whether of a state budget or a corporation.  Accidents of timing of receipts and expenditures can distort the results for any given period.  For example, there really is no difference in a check arriving on June 30 or July 1.  But if you are on a July 1-June 30 fiscal year and look…

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Vim and Vigor on UC Online Higher Ed

Byuclafaculty

From the Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert blog: Jerry Brown says UC, CSU leaders pledged to pursue online ed ‘vigorously’ Gov. Jerry Brown said today that he vetoed his own budget proposal to earmark $20 million for online education at the University of California and California State University systems only after leaders of those institutions assured him they would pursue online course offerings on their own.“I had an agreement from both the segments that they would carry out online vigorously,” Brown told reporters at an event in Sacramento. “As the leader of both governing boards, I’m actively engaged with both the…

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No Mandate for Online Ed at UC: Let’s Pretend!

Byuclafaculty

Our post last night that the governor line-item vetoed his own $10 million mandate in the new state budget for online courses at UC is correct in a literal sense. But what appears to have happened is that UC – which doesn’t like overt mandates which challenge its constitutional autonomy – agreed that it would spend $10 million on online ed anyway if the governor would just remove the mandate language. From Inside Higher Ed today: …“We’ve made a commitment to provide the $10 million, so it’s not going to affect our plans,” said Steve Montiel, a spokesman for the UC…

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Online Ed Earmarked Money Line-Item Vetoed

Byuclafaculty

Michael Meranze, in commenting on the previous post, noted that among the items vetoed by the governor was language that earmarked $10 million at UC for online ed courses.  As readers will know, that earmark was in the budget bill at the request of the governor.  Other quasi-earmarks were also vetoed.  The actual language doesn’t delete dollars from the UC budget – which is why I missed it in the prior post.  It just deletes specifications for how dollars are to be used.  The veto language reads: Item 6440-001-0001 — For support of University of California. I revise this item…

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Budget Signed: Smile But Then Scroll Down

Byuclafaculty

It was generally all smiles and laughter at the state budget signing this morning as the photo above shows.  Contrast that photo with the one below at the 2011 budget signing when the governor had to sign a budget – after getting no GOP support for putting a tax measure on the ballot – that assumed a phantom $4 billion in revenue to make things seem in “balance.”  No smiles there. In any case, there appear to be no surprises for UC in the budget. [But see the updated post above on the governor’s veto of his own online education…