State Budget

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So Glad the UC Budget Will Be in Good Hands

Byuclafaculty

California legislators head to Maui for retreat funded by special interests The LA Times headline says it all. But you can read it at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/la-me-legislature-maui-20111109,0,4657777.story As our earlier post noted, President Yudof will be submitting his budget for 2012-13 to the Regents next week. In an article in the Daily Bruin, UC VP Patrick Lenz notes that the last time the legislature enacted the UC budget as requested was in 2000-01 (peak of the dot-com boom and the revenue therefrom). See http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/11/uc_president_mark_yudof_proposes_budget_plan_to_increase_university_funding_from_the_state_although_

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UC Budget Proposal for 2012-13 Readied for Regents

Byuclafaculty

President Yudof’s UC budget proposal for 2012-13, scheduled for discussion at the Regents on Nov. 17, is now posted. The key links are http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov11/f12.pdf and http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov11/f11attach.pdf The proposal includes a request for increased “core” funding by 8%. Notably included is a contribution to the UC pension – which the state has not been doing since contributions resumed. There appears to be an arbitrary request for one fourth of the employer contribution ($87.6 million). See the last page of the second link. Why just one fourth is requested is not clear. Since this seems to be public pension year, given the…

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The Governor is the Lone Ranger on the Trigger

Byuclafaculty

The Sacramento Bee today carries a story about the budget for next year, the trigger based on this year’s revenues, etc. It refers to various projections made by the governor and others which unfortunately continue the standard state (and local) practice of mixing up stocks and flows and using words such as “deficit” outside the common meaning. First, it talks about a projected “deficit” for next year of around $3 billion. Anyone is free to project. But what was adopted last June was a budget for 2011-12. Anything beyond that is at most a “workload” projection. And, if you mean…

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Occupy UC?

Byuclafaculty

UC, CSU campuses to be site of economic-based protests Sacramento Bee, 11/5/11, Laurel Rosenhall The wave of anger at banks that has swept the country with the recent Occupy movement is coming to California college campuses next week. …The group sent letters Friday to University of California regents and trustees of the California State University, asking them to sign a pledge to support five items: increasing income taxes on California’s wealthiest; changing Proposition 13 so that corporate property taxes could rise; enacting a federal sales tax on large-scale financial transactions; reducing underwater mortgage debt; and reversing tuition increases, layoffs, and…

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And don’t forget the trigger

Byuclafaculty

Just a reminder that we still have the budget trigger – enacted by the legislature – aimed at UC among others. (If revenues don’t match certain projections, additional budget cuts are imposed.) Here is what state controller John Chiang had to say about it: …The Democratic controller credited the “trigger” cuts for adding certainty to the state budget in unpredictable times, noting that credit rating agencies have looked favorably on that mechanism. But he knows many Democratic lawmakers, who agreed to triggers only at Brown’s urging, don’t feel the same way. “As I share with a few legislators when I…

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So far, money from we-know-not-where has not appeared in state budget

Byuclafaculty

As readers of this blog will know, UC’s budget is still threatened by a possible pulling of a budget “trigger” if forecast revenues do not arrive as anticipated. What the legislature did when it enacted this fiscal year’s budget was to assume incremental revenue – but not raise taxes (or prevent the end of temporary taxes) to generate that additional revenue. Having made the assumption, it could then pass the budget by simple majority vote, i.e., without the 2/3 vote that a tax increase or extension would have required which would have entailed Republican votes. All budgets are based on…

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Peter Taylor, chief financial officer of UC, at Milken Conference

Byuclafaculty

At the Milken State of the State conference of Oct. 13, Peter Taylor – chief financial officer of UC – was a panelist and spoke on the economic impact of UC on California, tuition, out-of-state students, privatization, and UC-Merced. This is the same event at which Gov. Brown spoke earlier in the day. See prior post. (Cellphone picture of event on the right.) Below is an audio of the Taylor excerpts. (Video with still picture.)

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The Money Tree at the Fresno Bee

Byuclafaculty

You probably don’t follow the editorial page of the Fresno Bee religiously. With that in mind, yours truly reproduces an editorial that appeared on it last week – without comment. But before I do, you might be interested in the comment by state controller John Chiang regarding state revenues through the first quarter of the fiscal year and the possibility that the so-called budget “trigger” would be pulled – further cutting the UC budget: “For better or worse, the potential for revenue shortfalls is precisely why the Governor and Legislature included trigger cuts in this year’s State spending plan,” Chiang…

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Cal State-Westwood?

Byuclafaculty

Gov. Pat Brown signs the Donahoe Act in 1960 implementing the Master Plan for Higher Education. The LA Times ran an editorial yesterday, lamenting rising tuition at UC and the lack of state support. It also threw out some suggestions. Among them: …The university also should consider a temporary policy that favors admission to students in the immediate geographical area for a certain percentage of new undergraduates. That way, more students could live at home and avoid the hefty cost of a dorm. UC campuses are not usually commuter schools, but troubled times call for a willingness to make sensible…

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UC on the cheap

Byuclafaculty

The Sacramento Bee ran an editorial entitled “State can’t afford UC on the cheap” dated 9/25/11. Excerpt below. Like the NY Times – see earlier blog post – the Bee seems not to have caught up with the fact that the Regents didn’t go along with the multi-year tuition increase schedule at their last meeting. Nonetheless.. The University of California “shall constitute a public trust,” states the California Constitution. That trust has eroded as state financial support has declined. The overriding question today is how much of a UC education should be considered a public benefit for which the state…