Despite slowdown, UC budget fares well

BUDGET BREAKDOWN State spending by program
SOURCE: Legislative Analyst Office Original graphic by TIMOTHY
NGO/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Web adaptation by CHRISTINE TAN/Daily
Bruin Senior Staff

By Timothy Kudo and Kelly
Rayburn
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Gov. Gray Davis signed the state budget July 26, giving a
5-percent increase in funds to the University of California despite
a 1.7-percent decrease in the overall budget caused by a slowing
economy.

The economy has been adversely affected by the folding of many
dot-com businesses and the energy crisis, leading to cuts in
intermediate versions of the budget as well as the final draft in
which Davis sliced more than $500 million through line-item
vetoes.

While certain areas of the state budget received funding
decreases in excess of 30 percent, UC officials said what the
university received was good considering the financial situation
the state is in.

But even with the increase for the university, the budget failed
to provide funding increases in certain programs, UC spokesman Brad
Hayward said.

By failing to provide such funds, the state broke a partnership
between itself and the UC in which the state guaranteed the
university funding in return for ensured enrollment growth, passage
of the “4 percent plan” and improved transfer rates,
among other agreements, Hayward said.

The budget includes:

• Funding for the state to ensure resident student fees do not
  increase.

• Funding for three institutes of science and innovation,
  including a nanotechnology research center at UCLA.

“¢bull; $2 million less than the university’s request of
$338.5 million for outreach.

“¢bull; Funding for 4.5 percent enrollment growth.

“¢bull; A cut of $5 million the university requested for student
services.

Also, the budget, signed 26 days late due to legislative
hold-ups, failed to provide the UC with a 1-percent increase for
building and information technology upgrades, which is called for
in the partnership.

Also vetoed was $2.5 million the UC requested for community
college counseling as part of the “dual admissions”
proposal. A 4-percent increase for staff compensation ended up
being cut in half as well.

The dual admissions plan guarantees admission to a UC campus to
the top 12.5 percent of graduating students at each high school if
they complete certain requirements at a community college
first.

UC officials said they are working with assemblyman and budget
committee chair Tony Cardenas, D-Sylmar, to get $2.5 million for
dual admissions counseling through legislation.

The governor sliced $2 million from the university’s
outreach budget but left it to the UC to determine which outreach
programs would lose the money, UC Student Association Chair Debbie
Davis said.

In conversations with UC officials and legislators, Debbie said
it was made clear that up to $1 million would be cut from
previously proposed increases in the student initiated outreach
programs.

Those programs are currently funded at about $80,000 systemwide,
she said.

“This was a significant pot of money,” Debbie
said.

Student Regent Tracy Davis said she didn’t think the cuts
would come in that area.

“I have not heard anything about that,” she
said.

The governor signed his first late budget after it spent nearly
three weeks going through the assembly and senate. The budget
process was slowed in large part by debate over a sales tax
increase, which could begin in January and was opposed by many
assembly Republicans.

Assembly Democrats offered tax breaks to farmers and senior
citizens to garner enough Republican votes for the needed
two-thirds approval.

Republican leaders charged that Davis used the line-item veto to
reward certain legislators by leaving in programs of local interest
to them, while making big cuts in important programs, including
education.

“It’s a shame that pork projects and the expansion
of welfare were more important to Gray Davis than education,”
said Assembly Republican leader Dave Cox, R-Sacramento, in a
statement.

But the governor said California’s school children were
the budget’s “big winners.”

“Even in a softening economy, I wanted to maintain a
strong commitment to education,” Davis said in front of
students at Mack Elementary school in Sacramento after he signed
the budget.

Many democratic assemblymembers applauded Davis’
signing.

Scott Svonkin, chief of staff for Assemblyman Paul Koretz,
D-West Hollywood, said Koretz was pleased with the budget, given
California’s economic situation.

Koretz represents the district which includes UCLA.

“The only thing that would have been better is if the
energy crisis had never happened,” Svonkin said.

With Daily Bruin wire reports.