As you may recall from our Nov. newsletter, the Regents requested funding for a COLA averaging 2% for all UC employees and an additional 0.2% parity adjustment for Academic Senate Faculty, designed to maintain parity with our comparison institutions. That plan may be threatened by reductions in the budget which Governor Davis has now submitted to the Legislature.
A recent press release (available on the Web at http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/uwnews/) announced that the Governor’s budget reduces UC’s 1999-2000 request for permanent state General Fund support by approximately $50 million and also discontinues $70 million of one-time funding available in 1998-99 for core UC needs such as instructional technology, equipment, library materials and deferred maintenance.
Larry Hershman, UC vice president for budget, said the proposed funds are not sufficient to cover an anticipated 3 percent enrollment growth, keep student fees level and fund growth in the university’s basic program needs. “The $50 million reduction from the Regents’ workload budget and the loss of one-time funding for core needs would hurt the university a great deal,” Hershman said. “Before we propose a plan to cope with these reductions, though, we will work with the Governor to see if we can reach agreement on a more satisfactory funding level in the context of a new compact.”
Additional information presented at the Regents’ meeting on January 14 included some of the options UC is considering to deal with the cuts. To accommodate the $50M cut in permanent budget funding for UC, Vice President Hershman suggested reducing or possibly even eliminating some of the requests for deferred maintenance, equipment and libraries, and COLAs. Regent Connerly said that UC must put consideration of student fee increases on the table as well, despite his acknowledgment that Legislators do not want student fee increases. The only other solution mentioned was possibly reinstating the car tax which Wilson reduced last year.
Regent Johnson noted that consideration of addressing the faculty-student ratio problem is lamentably impossible given the budget situation. Guided by our lobbyist, the FAs will work hard to persuade legislators to provide more funding for UC this spring if/when the State's financial picture becomes brighter and we know more about the progress of the negotiations with the Governor for a new compact for higher education.