State legislators are putting University of California officials in the hot seat this week by picking through each line of the 2015-2016 UC budget in a long-overdue examination of the system’s finances.
Since her reelection as Assembly speaker in November, Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) has championed a “zero-based” budgeting approach for the UC in which each line item in the UC budget proposal must be approved by state legislators. A budget subcommittee will do just that in a series of public hearings in Sacramento that began Wednesday.
The tactic is a departure from the state’s past handling of the UC budget, which only required legislative approval on any budgetary changes from the previous year. This new process is likely to result in a long, drawn-out discussion on the UC’s budget, but if it’s in the name of reducing the financial burden placed on students, then it’s a discussion worth having.
Atkins has been outspoken in her disapproval of the UC Board of Regents’ recent vote to raise tuition by as much as 28 percent over the next five years, as have other leaders in Sacramento. Now it is her and the state’s chance to act on that criticism.
Lawmakers can and should use zero-based budgeting as an opportunity to hold UC officials accountable by considering the same questions students have been asking in demonstrations, petitions and student government resolutions for months: What is being wasted by the UC? Why is tuition increasing? What specifically is missing from the state’s budget allocations to the UC that mandates a greater financial burden on students?
A drawn-out UC budget discussion raises the stakes for UC administrators by making the budget more of a political issue, one that could yield a positive result for students and taxpayers. The discussion would hold UC officials more accountable, applying pressure to their management of finances and reducing a rubber-stamp mentality among state legislators.
The burden is now on these lawmakers to find and expose the bureaucratic waste that they have been making a talking point for years.
It’s on the UC to be transparent about how that money is spent and explain to students and taxpayers exactly what the University is doing with their money. These are essential questions the UC hasn’t had to completely answer for years.
To be sure, the state has a large responsibility in adequately funding the UC. Politicians cannot deliberately shortchange the University, then turn around and blame the UC for financial mismanagement when it asks for more money. Nor should it pit in-state and out-of-state students against one another as lawmakers try to duck UC funding shortfalls.
But if zero-based budgeting is done right, the UC will have to answer publicly for how it spends nearly $3 billion in state general funds, while being pressed under the harsh lens of skeptical legislators that it is making student education its primary concern.