February 2, 1995
Next year California could spend more money to house its convicts than to educate students in its two university systems if Governor Pete Wilson's proposed 1995-96 budget goes through the legislature unabated.
But despite the slated increase in corrections funding, and a proposed tax cut, Wilson has also made a compact with the California State University system promising to raise funding for the next four years.
The increases in spending for education and corrections in the governors proposed budget have left analysts wondering where the money will come from.
"It doesn't add up," said California Higher Education Policy Center spokeswoman Joni Finney, who added that with astronomical increases in prison spending, and the promised tax cut, the governor's higher education compact will be very hard to keep. The California Higher Education Policy Center is an independent think tank based in San Jose.
California Department of Finance Director, H.D. Palmer disagrees, citing a sustaining recovery that he believes will provide the necessary revenue to keep budgetary commitments to both corrections and higher education.
"With the economic ringer the state has been through for the past five years we haven't been able to provide the services we've wanted," said Palmer. "With the recovery we need to renew our commitment to higher education."
The compact raises the CSU budget from $1.55 billion in 1994-95 to $1.6 billion in 1995-96, and in addition promises an average four percent increase every year until 1998-99, according Palmer.
The CSU budget had its high-water mark in 1990-91 at $1.69 billion and dropped three years in a row to $1.48 billion in 1993-94 before a slight increase last year, according to CSU spokeswoman Colleen Bentley-Adler.
The declining funding precipitated an enrollment loss of more than 50,000 students system wide; a drain that is beginning to level off due to new funding, said Bentley-Adler.
"We're very, very pleased by [the governors] recognition of the importance of a stable funding base for higher education. We haven't been able to hire faculty or offer classes so we've had to turn people away," Bentley Adler said. She added that schools including SF State have slowly started reopening classes.
Under the proposed budget, the California Department of Corrections would receive $3.7 billion as well as an additional $422 million from the federal government earmarked for imprisoning illegal immigrants.
But there is no guarantee that Wilson will receive the $422 million dollars from the federal government. And he has presented no alternative plan to come up with that money should his demands to the Department of Justice go unheeded, said Finney.
Palmer is confident that with the changes in the political climate the money will be forthcoming. But, he added, if the $422 million does not come through, "we will have to look at reductions in other state programs."
The total state funding for CSU and UC would amount to approximately $4 billion. That amount would be less than proposed prison expenditures for the first time in California history if the state is forced to come up with the money it expects from Washington.
"It's a mystery to me about where the money is coming from," said Finney, "[California] just passed one of the strictest three strikes laws in the country, and there's nothing to keep [prison] costs from going up."
And according to Finney current problems are only the beginning. The Center expects the number of students qualified to enter the CSU and UC systems to increase more than 50 percent by 2006, a scenario for which the governor has no plan, she said. "The long term is very bleak for higher education."