USAC fighting for budget solutions

Since coming into UCLA as a first-year, I have seen the cost of education almost double. I have seen several of my friends drop out of UCLA completely because of their inability to pay the fees. Students have been forced to take on more and more loans to pay tuition while their majors are downsized and their classes become overcrowded. Covel Tutorials, which was primarily funded with state dollars, was eliminated last year. The economics/international area studies major, museum studies minor, human complex systems minor and now possibly the political science minor have all been cut or have suspended admissions.

Now, UCLA is planning to discontinue its Institute for Far Eastern Studies. There is no question that state budget cuts to the University of California have thrown UCLA into a state of crisis.

This past summer, the California State Legislature cut $650 million from the UC system in their June budget. In turn, the UC regents raised tuition 9.6 percent in an unprecedented summer fee increase that all students had to scramble to pay before this fall quarter began. This year’s incoming class of students had to pay $1200 more in tuition than they were told when they submitted an intent to register in the spring of 2011.

Recently, UC President Mark Yudof introduced a proposal to the Board of Regents that would increase tuition up to 16 percent every year for the next four years. This would bring tuition up to a staggering $22,068 by 2016, not including books, housing and other campus-based fees.

Why is tuition going through the roof? It is because the state of California has a revenue problem. It has a large array of public services that its citizens rely on and do not want cut, yet, it does not take in enough funds to pay for them.

The External Vice President’s office of the Undergraduate Students Association (USAC) is fighting for solutions to this problem with students statewide. We are targeting Gov. Brown and the State Legislature, demanding that they put a progressive tax initiative on the 2012 ballot. This will bring in needed revenue with which the UCs, California State Universities and community colleges can be funded, and deep cuts to UCLA classes and services will stop.

However, the 2012 initiative is only a short-term solution. California has a systematic inability to take in revenue and fund services such as education. Proposition 13, implemented in 1978, created a two-thirds supermajority requirement in the state legislature to raise revenue. This means that, during the budget process, our legislators cannot get enough votes to fill in the deficit with anything other than drastic cuts. Proposition 13 also created a corporate property tax loophole that allows businesses to pay less than their fair share of property tax in the state. It caps commercial property taxes at a very low level.

Currently, residential property tax revenue makes up a majority of total property revenue while commercial property’s share of that revenue continues to shrink.

Not only is property tax bad for residents, it’s bad for new businesses. New businesses that come into California have to pay new property taxes and compete with businesses that have had their property taxes capped since 1978. Reforming this loophole levels the playing field and can bring in an estimated $8 billion to the state of California. This money can easily be used to fund higher education.

In our advocacy, the USAC External Vice President’s office is taking a proactive, solution-oriented stance. We are doing more than just asking for tuition increases to stop. We are advocating for both immediate and long-term change for students and for California.

Joelle Gamble
Gamble is the USAC external vice president for the 2011-2012 school year and a fourth-year international development studies student.

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