State Budget

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State Budget: Running the Clock

Byuclafaculty

If you are wondering what is happening to the state budget, it appears that the closest analogy is the point in the film High Noon in which the train carrying the Bad Guy arrives at noon. After he arrives, there will be a confrontation/shoot-out with the Good Guy. In the case of the state budget, however, it is midnight – not noon – that is critical: midnight on June 30. At that point, the fiscal year 2010-11 ends and there is no budget to replace it. Also, the taxes that the governor wants to extend expire so that any ballot…

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UC-Riverside Wants $$$s for New Med School

Byuclafaculty

Olds urges UCR lobbying group to help gain accreditation (excerpt) LORA HINES, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 6/22/11 The dean of UC Riverside’s proposed medical school on Wednesday appeared before university supporters and urged them to contact Sacramento lawmakers to secure ongoing state funding needed to accredit the school. Dr. G. Richard Olds asked members of the Citizens University Committee, a UCR lobbying group, for assistance in securing state money. Earlier this month, university officials were informed by an accreditation panel that the medical school would not be accredited because the state had not committed to ongoing funding. The medical school needs a…

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No One Actually Reads or Listens: More on the State Budget

Byuclafaculty

At the moment, Controller John Chiang is being praised for blocking legislators from being paid because they did not produce a “balanced” budget by the June 15th constitutional deadline. But actually what he said is that the legislature made some mistakes in drafting up their budget so that the assumed “revenues” do not add up to assumed “expenditures.” (The fact that the governor vetoed the budget was not relevant to his decision.) The controller has been heralded on Fox News on the right (see http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1013691636001/california-withholds-legislatures-pay/) and just about everywhere else along the political spectrum. If you actually watch the Fox…

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No Pay Today: State Budget Update

Byuclafaculty

As noted in an update to one of yesterday’s blog entries, state controller John Chiang has ruled that the budget passed by the legislature (but vetoed by the governor), was not “balanced.” However, he took a relatively narrow view of what the imbalance was, which would open the door to some other budget deal that might have funny elements in it. Chiang’s ruling means legislators don’t get paid. So far, no one has filed a legal challenge to his ruling. There is a report that the governor has a plan for passing a budget by majority vote, i.e., without Republican…

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State Budget (Whenever There Is One) to Ban Funding UC Athletics

Byuclafaculty

The story below somehow got away yours truly on Sunday. But Inside Higher Ed alerted me so here it is belatedly: Budget plan bans taxpayer funds for UC athletics (Excerpt) Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle, June 19, 2011 With a few words in the new state budget, lawmakers will ban spending taxpayer money on intercollegiate athletics – and end a controversy that started when a sharp-eyed UC Berkeley professor found that university officials had changed details of the law. University of California officials acknowledge asking the state to remove athletics from the list of programs required to be “self-supporting and…

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Straws in the Fiscal Winds: State and Campus

Byuclafaculty

Various straws in the state and UCLA budgetary winds today. The controversy over whether legislators will get paid after having passed a budget by the constitutional deadline which was then vetoed remains. Politicos are waiting state controller John Chiang’s decision on whether the vetoed budget was “balance” by some definition. Whatever he decides seems likely to be litigated. No one who has been state controller has ever said that his/her sole political ambition since age 4 has been to be state controller. I would venture to say that all of them would like to “advance” to some other office eventually….

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UCLA Forecast Chart Tells the Underlying Story

Byuclafaculty

Above you see my favorite chart from the UCLA Anderson Forecast. It appears each quarter in the publication that accompanies the Forecast conference. This version is from the most recent Forecast conference which took place on campus in Ackerman last Wednesday. (My brilliant cellphone photo of the conference on the left reminds us that there is – after all – space on campus to hold big conferences, but that is another story.) What the chart tells us is that California has essentially never recovered from the recession of the early 1990s. The trend line is the Cold War employment growth…

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Radio Interview on UC Budget Cut (in Now-Vetoed Budget)

Byuclafaculty

UC Exec VP for Business Operations Nathan Brostrom was interviewed earlier today by Madeline Brand, KPCC, shortly before the governor vetoed the state budget. Brostrom asserts that the governor could have line-item vetoed the UC cut. It’s not clear that the governor could do that but, in any event, vetoing the entire budget ends the issue for now. Click below for the interview. Note that it is uncertain where we go from here. The governor and the legislative Democrats are now at odds. The state controller, John Chiang, is deciding whether the budget that was passed but vetoed was “balanced”…

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At Last, Something Is Heard

Byuclafaculty

We at this blog have been waiting for UCOP and the Regents to get involved in the state budget. It’s late in the game – a simple-majority budget was passed last night that (as previously noted on this blog) chops another $150 million from UC. But at last, we are hearing from UC’s powers-that-be. Gov. Brown could veto the budget. If he signs it, he could cut spending in particular lines but can’t raise spending. However, other bills can be enacted that modify the budget. In any case, the UCOP press release reproduced below in italics could be the start…

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Understatement of the Week

Byuclafaculty

See the prior post on the simple-majority budget and the further cuts it includes for UC. The Democratic plan …calls for $150 million reductions each to the University of California and California State University systems. UC Office of the President spokesman Steve Montiel responded as follows: “We are assessing the latest proposal from the state Senate, and it’s too soon to say with certainty what the impact would be. But there’s no question that additional cuts would not be good news for UC and the Californians it serves. The university already has taken steps to absorb a $500 million cut,…