Today the UC Board of Regents approved the proposed furlough plan to offset the $813 million cut in state funding expected for the upcoming fiscal year that begins this fall.
After the meeting, University of California President Mark Yudof met with the press to discuss the implications of the economic decisions made in the past three days.
“If we didn’t have the furloughs, layoffs would be likely,” he said.
He added that negotiations with the unions that represent UC workers still have to make furloughs possible for union-represented UC staff. In a press conference Wednesday, Yudof said that the UC will ask union representatives to reopen the contracts so that staff members belonging to unions can take their share of the cuts.
Both Yudof and student regent Jesse Bernal said that the problem comes from the state, not the UC.
“The state is really to blame here,” Bernal said.
There is a substantial likelihood of discussing student fee increases at the next Board of Regents meeting in January, but the furlough plan may help to mitigate potential fee hikes, Yudof said.
“Without a furlough program, I think we would have been forced to raise fees this September,” he said.
Lt. Gov. John Garamendi was the only regent to vote against the fiscal plan with the furloughs.
At both today’s meeting and Wednesday’s meeting, Garamendi urged the regents to go to Sacramento to lobby for action from the state government to help fund the UC.
“So my point is this: We can fight fiercely in retreat as we have for more than two decades now. Or we can stop “¦ turn ourselves in the other direction and fight fiercely for the future of the university,” Garamendi said during Wednesday’s meeting.
Specifically, he called for the regents to endorse AB 656. Known as the Torrico bill, AB 656 would impose an oil severance tax of 9.9 percent on the extraction of oil from California land or water.
If passed, AB 656 would go into effect Jan. 1, 2010, and the taxes would be distributed among the California State University, the UC and the California Community Colleges.
Today’s meeting also included a report on student demographics and a decline in the recruitment of underrepresented groups at the UC.
“Change was expected. And it’s getting worse,” said Regent Eddie Island in response to the report.
However, while Yudof stated his own responsibility for working on improving the low numbers, both he and Garamendi said that increasing the enrollment of students from underrepresented communities is something that needs to happen at the campus level.