“A tough budget for tough times” would jack fees 38%

Sacramento, January 25—Inheriting a chronically out of balance budget, Governor Jerry Brown has set to work to right the ship of state. He promised in his campaign he would forego the accounting gimmicks employed for years to keep California’s budget afloat, because these have failed to address the underlying problems of the deficit. He has mostly kept his promise with his first budget proposal, and the result is not pretty for any state funded program, including the community colleges. Brown faces a $25 billion deficit over the next 18 months. He has outlined a relatively balanced approach, with roughly half of the deficit to be dealt with through cuts, and half through extension of temporary tax increases put in place two years ago (along with closing some business tax loopholes). A comparatively modest $2 billion fix comes from account shuffling, and he places $1 billion in reserves. He is also proposing an historic shift of responsibility for local service funding back to local governments, to be paid for through part of the tax package.

Brown is holding to his oft-stated promise not to raise taxes without a vote of the electorate. At the time of this writing it remains unclear whether the tax package requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. To put this on the June ballot in a special election may be possible through a majority vote, but no one seems to know for sure. In any case, the entire budget proposal will come apart at the seams if the tax package doesn’t make it onto the ballot in June.

Terrible cuts

The damage that would be done through the proposed cuts is horrific. Among the largest is more than $3 billion to social services, consisting of $1.7 billion to Medi-Cal, and $1.5 billion to the CalWORKs (welfare-to-work) program. The Medi-Cal reduction proposal would limit doctor visits to ten per year per Medi-Cal patient, after which there is no reimbursement. The reality is that people with chronic conditions would quickly reach their limit, resulting in providers seeing patients for free, or patients using the ER as their frontline provider.

Anthony Wright, director of the advocacy group Health Access, notes that 7.7 million Californians are covered by Medi-Cal. He says, “This means the sickest ten per cent of Californians—people on chemotherapy, for instance—would have to stop treatment a couple months into the year.” Wright also points out that the million children in the Health Families program (just above poverty level) would lose their vision care coverage, potentially resulting in tens of thousands of kids unable to see the blackboard.

After three years of cuts to K-12 totaling $18 billion, this sector—the largest single piece of the state budget—would see relatively little additional harm in this year’s proposal. Higher education takes the next highest hit after social services. The University of California and California State University systems are each reduced by $500 million.

State employees not represented in collective bargaining would suffer a 10% pay cut, which comes to $300 million.

Community colleges

The community colleges will face a $400 million apportionment reduction, or about 7% of its total funding. Brown proposes that students pay $10 more per unit, a steep jump from the current $26/unit, or a 38% increase. Full-time students would pay $1080 per year in the formerly free system.

A less visible reduction would be through deferral of an additional $129 million in funding, bringing the total system funding deferred over the past several years to nearly $1 billion. And a devil-in-the-details item would be an unspecified change in the student census date, the goal of which would be to encourage student retention by prioritizing course offerings that have higher retention rates. Currently one in six community college students drop out of class before the end of the semester. This proposal would move back the census date, presumably forcing colleges to discontinue low retention course offerings and boost higher retention classes.

According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the impact of student fee hikes should be minimal, since fee waivers are available for students from families making under $65,000 per year, and families making up to $160,000/year are eligible for federal income tax credits. But experience shows a different outcome, say long-time Los Angeles community college faculty leaders.

“Historically, the community colleges lose ten thousand students for every dollar fee increase,” says Joanne Waddell, president of the Los Angeles Community College Faculty Guild, AFT Local 1521.

“The forms alone are daunting,” attests L.A. Trade Tech faculty member John McDowell, who tried to fill out the fee waiver forms for his daughter. “It’s page after page that you can’t understand. But there are many hurdles besides the forms,” he says, ticking off the costs of books, tools, childcare, and transportation, on top of which a fee increase can and often does push the student out. “Fewer than half of eligible students ever apply. And with a fee increase, they just leave.”