EDITORIAL: Ideology holds gun to head of college system
Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal to repair the state's deficit-laden budget includes cutting $500 million from University of California funding -- and that's if a raft of temporary taxes are extended by voters.
If not, UC funding losses could top $1 billion. That prospect has the regents who govern the system's 10 campuses worried about the likelihood of additional tuition increases, reduced enrollment, crammed classrooms and widespread layoffs -- all major blows to what has been one of the world's pre-eminent university institutions.
California voters should be given the final say on Brown's tax plan, but Sacramento Republicans are standing in their way, refusing so far to sanction his proposal to place the question on a special-election ballot. And higher education is only one of many areas that will suffer damaging cuts without an extension of the temporary taxes we're already paying -- but which expire soon.
We're still waiting to hear a good reason from Republican legislators as to why they've refused to let voters decide on tax extensions. We can only conclude that their goal is to allow those tax extensions to expire, forcing the governor and majority Democrats to pitch them as tax increases, which is what they would have then become. Polling suggests that voters support the proposed tax extensions but are less enthusiastic about tax increases -- even though they're essentially the same thing in this particular case.
Meanwhile, California's once-enviable system of quality, affordable public universities (and we include the CSU system here) twists in the wind. And the Golden State's technological competitiveness -- which Republicans and Democrats agree is vital to our future -- remains in jeopardy.
Republicans and Democrats must meet in the middle on this issue and toss political stubbornness out the window. The state's vital system of higher education is being played as a pawn in this game, and it's wrong.
