State Budget

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More on State Budget Leaks

Byuclafaculty

As a previous post noted, this is the season in which there are leaks about the governor’s upcoming budget proposal for 2013-14 which will be presented officially in early January.  Given the timing, the budget is already prepared, or 99% prepared. So far, there has been no leak about higher ed.  However, there is an item today in the Sacramento Bee about K-12 (a much larger chunk of the state budget) that suggests the governor will propose revamping the K-12 allocation formulas to give more assistance to disadvantaged children and districts with concentrations of such children. He pushed for changes…

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It’s Budget Leak Time

Byuclafaculty

There are formal and informal elements of the state budget process.  One formal part is the requirement that the governor present a budget proposal to the legislature in early January (Jan. 10).  The legislature is supposed to enact a budget by mid-June.  But there are also informal elements.  For example, it is traditional that the governor present the legislature with a “May revise” modified proposal for the budget in mid-May.  Another tradition is that bits of news about the budget begin to leak out around this time. Given the realities of the complexities of the state budget, by now the…

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Legislative Analyst Says Everything’s OK With UC Faculty Pay

Byuclafaculty

Legislative Analyst’s summary: In this report, we assess UC’s ability to recruit and retain tenured and tenure-track faculty. We find that (1) UC has been hiring candidates who have received their highest degree from some of the most selective universities in the nation, (2) UC has a long history of hiring its top choice faculty candidates, (3) most new entry-level faculty stay at UC long enough to earn tenure, (4) less than 2 percent of faculty resign from UC each year, and (5) UC’s faculty compensation is competitive with other top universities. These findings indicate that UC generally has been…

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Whoops

Byuclafaculty

No, things are not as bad as the picture suggests. But the state controller reports that through November, receipts are about $800 million below the original budget estimates (which include Prop 30).  About half of the missing revenue is attributable to corporate profits tax net receipts.  The controller also notes that Facebook’s IPO produced less for the state than expected.  And expenditures are up more than $2 billion above estimates.  The state isn’t running out of cash.  And there are 7 months to go in this fiscal year.  But note that these numbers are coming in at a time when…

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Please Sir, Can I Have My Med School?

Byuclafaculty

From the Riverside Press-Enterprise: Only hours into the 2013-2014 session, a pair of new lawmakers from Riverside introduced a pair of virtually identical measures to annually appropriate $15 million to UC Riverside’s School of Medicine.  The bills are the first of their kind so early in a legislative year. Their authors, state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, and Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, pledged to secure money for the medical school during their campaigns this year. …University officials have tried since 2008 to secure ongoing state money for the school amid massive budget shortfalls. In 2011, officials postponed the school’s first freshman…

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Listen to Regents Meeting of Nov. 13, 2012

Byuclafaculty

The UC Board of Regents, Committee on Grounds and Building met on the afternoon of Nov. 13, 2012.  On the agenda were public comments, approval of the UC capital budget plan, discussion of a long term plan for student housing at UC-Santa Barbara, and design approval of a $118.6 million faculty office building project at UC-San Francisco. Two speakers in the public comments session referred to out-of-state students although exactly what was being suggested was unclear. The capital budget is a wishlist of projects that it would be nice if the state funded through general obligation bonds.  However, given the…

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Lawsuit against Prop 13’s 2/3 requirement reported rejected

Byuclafaculty

Charles Young The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA) has reported this afternoon via its email service that the lawsuit filed by former UCLA Chancellor Charles Young to overturn the 2/3 tax increase requirement in Prop 13 of 1978 has been rejected by the California Supreme Court.  So far, no other news source has so reported: The California Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to significant aspects of Proposition 13, prosecuted by former UCLA Chancellor Charles Young…  Earlier this year, the 2nd District Court of Appeal agreed with attorneys representing the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that Young’s suit challenging…

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Gov. Brown on UC online education & budget

Byuclafaculty

Last Wednesday, we posted the audio of the UC Regents meeting of that day which Governor Brown attended as an ex officio Regent.  We noted in that posting that he pushed for UC to move into online education.  And he indicated that without such a shift in the “paradigm,” UC could not receive enough funding from the state to prevent continued increases in tuition.  For the convenience of blog readers, below is an excerpt from that meeting in which these views are expressed by Governor Brown: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKX-F5OCBJc?feature=player_detailpage]

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Why Prop 30 Will Not Be a Windfall for UC

Byuclafaculty

The chart above from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggests that the state’s “social welfare” functions will take a growing share of the budget. [Click on the chart to enlarge and make clearer.] Those functions were very limited at the time of the Master Plan’s adoption.  Since that time, they have tended to crowd out UC’s share of the state budget.  Ultimately, that is why the governor cautioned UC about its wishlist budget at the most recent Regents meeting. You can find the report from which the chart above was taken at:http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3860

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More Prop 30 Election Post Mortem

Byuclafaculty

There has been much discussion as to whether it was the youth vote that ultimately passed Prop 30, the governor’s tax initiative.  Prop 30 had done marginally in the pre-election polls and appeared to be slipping.  Yet it ultimately passed with 54% of the vote.  So did this result stem from a surge in youth voters? It appears that the answer is yes and no.  The Field Poll now reports that it underestimated the youth vote when it made its calculation of likely voters.  Pollsters routinely adjust their samples to try and get at who will actually show up on…