Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s solution for balancing
California’s beleaguered budget includes raising student
fees, cutting access to higher education for new students, and
slashing into UC funding. The governor’s plan also calls for
billions of dollars in cuts to health care and welfare programs and
a $1.3 billion shift in property taxes from local governments.
“Everyone has to help fund the budget crisis,”
Schwarzenegger said during a Friday press conference after the
budget was announced. The budget would cut $372 million from the
University of California, which includes $29.9 million in mid-year
reductions. The mid-year reductions will cut substantially into
funding for outreach programs and completely eliminate the
UC’s labor research institutes. The governor’s budget
anticipates the UC will raise in-state undergraduate student fees
by 10 percent, out-of-state student fees by 20 percent, and
graduate student fees by 40 percent. During his State of the State
speech on Tuesday, Schwarzenegger had promised not to raise student
fees by more than 10 percent, but he did not specify whether he
meant undergraduate or graduate fees. With the fee increase,
in-state undergraduates would pay $5,482 per year, and out-of-state
undergraduates $16,474 per year. Both the California State
University system and community colleges will see substantial
increases in student fees as well. The budget will badly cripple
enrollment at the UC as it provides no funding for enrollment
growth for the 2004-2005 academic year. UC officials have said if
the UC does not receive funding for enrollment growth, it would
have to restrict enrollments. Aggravating the situation, the budget
anticipates the UC will cut enrollment of new freshmen by 10
percent, or 3,200 students, which would save the state $24.8
million. Students could also see larger class sizes as the budget
proposes saving $35.2 million by increasing the student-faculty
ratio at the UC by 5 percent. UC programs will also see another
round of cuts. Research was cut by $11.6 million, and graduate
school funding by $42.6 million. Only nursing schools were
unaffected by cuts. The double whammy of graduate student fee hikes
and program cuts to the graduate schools may be because the state
weighs the importance of the undergraduate experience more, said
Susanne Lohmann, a professor of political science at UCLA.
“The first thing (the state) does is increase tuition on the
graduate students because fundamentally they don’t care about
them,” she said. Schwarzenegger’s budget did provide
$10 million in one-time funding to the UC’s newest campus in
Merced. The Davis administration had cut funding to Merced,
delaying its opening until 2005-2006. Although funding cuts to
enrollment and programs are substantial, Steve Olsen, UCLA vice
chancellor for budget and finance, said the UC had braced itself
for even deeper ones. “Objectively, the cuts could have been
much worse than what we are seeing here,” he said. UC
President Robert Dynes expressed apprehension over the cuts and
what it meant for the university’s future. “The
continuing trend of reduced state funding for UC makes me deeply
concerned about our ability to deliver on the promise that the
University of California has always represented for the people of
California,” he said in a statement.
Other key impacts The state’s Medi-Cal
program was one of the hardest hit by Schwarzenegger’s
budget, with a $900 million cut. The governor also proposed a cap
on enrollment for the state’s health insurance programs for
the poor and elderly. Schwarzenegger kept his pledge not to
increase taxes, but he did renege on his promise to protect tax
money to local governments. During the recall election in October,
Schwarzenegger criticized former Gov. Gray Davis for proposing the
state borrow $10.7 billion from local governments.
Schwarzenegger’s budget still faces several significant
hurdles. It hinges in part on projections of $2.9 billion in
additional tax revenue in 2004-2005 and voter approval of a $15
billion bond measure in March. The governor said the $15 billion
bond is crucial to his budget plan. “If the $15 billion bond
does not pass, we will have to make painful cuts in essential
programs,” Schwarzenegger said. Democratic legislators who
control both the state Assembly and Senate will likely object to
the proposed cuts to health care and welfare programs, and local
governments are expected to protest the $1.3 billion in property
taxes they will lose to the state. “Shifting property taxes
has all sorts of negative concerns associated with it,” said
Pat Leary of the California State Association of Counties.
“We need to know what else is piled on top of it.” In
addition, the state must still cope with a current $14 billion
budget deficit and a deficit of $12.6 billion the state has
compiled over the past three years. All told, the state is expected
to have close to a $27 billion deficit by 2005.
Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal is far from being finalized.
The governor will submit revisions to the budget in May, and the
Legislature will have until July to approve a final budget,
although that deadline has rarely been met in recent memory.
However, Olsen said the budget proposal right now may be a good
indication of what the UC will face in July. “Over the last
several years the Legislature has generally accepted what the
governor has proposed … so it would be prudent for the university
to plan on the basis that this proposal has legs, and it will go
forward,” he said.
With reports from Adam Foxman, Bruin Staff, and Daily Bruin
wire services.