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Photograph by Douglas Rider
Judy Miner, vice president of instruction at De Anza College, sits next to one of the empty library shelves, which will likely remain so because of budget cuts.
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Tapped Out
State budget vetoes greatly impact De Anza, leave city largely unscathed
By KEVIN FAYLE
When Gov. Gray Davis signed California's 2001-'02 budget at a Sacramento-area school, he spoke into the cameras about his continued support of education. The budget he approved told a different story, however.
After the budget cleared the state legislature, Davis had a field day with his blue pencil. He used his line-item veto power to strike $554 million from the budget. Almost a quarter of that, $178 million, came out of funds reserved for higher education, and the bulk of the cuts come at the expense of the state's community colleges.
The list of vetoes also includes items designated for local governments, but representatives from the city of Cupertino say the vetoes have not dropped any major bombs on the city's finances.
California Community College systems provide the bulk of higher education for Santa Clara County high school graduates, according to 1998 government figures. However, the schools receive the least amount of funding of any education sector in the state, including elementary and secondary education. The state spent $3,871 on each student enrolled in community colleges in the 2000-'01 school year, compared with $6,801 for each K-12 student, $11,047 for each California State University student and $28,215 for each University of California student.
Even before the vetoes, funding for community colleges already stood 26 percent below the national average.
"People are appalled," De Anza College President Martha Kanter said of the vetoes. The college will lose out on $2,158,047 in state funds because of Davis' cuts, money De Anza has counted on for two decades.
"It's just really shocking that the governor would undervalue community colleges," she said.
The majority of the lost revenue will come out of the college's scheduled maintenance projects. The school will lose $1,358,047 it had earmarked for repairs such as replacing roofs. The funding decrease will also affect the efficacy of the money the school receives from Measure E, the facilities modernization bond that voters approved in November 1999 for the Foothill-De Anza district.
The state provides money for facilities if schools have matching funds. De Anza has $130 million from Measure E to put up against the state's funds, but after the vetoes, the state no longer has the money to match the college. This shrinks the funding the college will receive from Measure E by half, and will force the administration to stretch its dollars.
Fortunately, the administration had anticipated an economic slowdown and managed to save approximately $300,000 from last year's budget as a cushion for hard times. This will not cover the veto shortfall, however, so the college will use some of the money it had reserved for future projects, such as a state-of-the-art language lab, to continue to provide services for students.
"We're looking at using funds for tomorrow today," Kanter said.
The vetoes resulted in an $800,000 decrease in library and instructional materials for the college, which largely translates into high-tech equipment. The school leases much of its equipment to save itself the cost of constantly replacing it as new technology arises. With the budget reductions, it becomes harder for the college to rent the necessary equipment.
"We're buying time so that this doesn't impact students entering in the fall of 2001," said Judy Miner, the college's VP of instruction.
Should De Anza need to cut services, Miner said the first, and hopefully only, thing to go would be the college's casual help. This would mean eliminating some of the non-essential jobs on campus. Kanter and Miner both expect that to constitute the only measure the college would need to implement.
"This is a belt-tightening, but it's not a crisis," Kanter said.
The two administrators see the governor's actions as evidence of his detachment from the realities of the community college system. Kanter stressed that community colleges primarily serve the working poor and the middle-class, and for many represent their only shot at higher education.
"We're the first-chance place," she said.
Miner said she believes the governor has overlooked the benefits of the community colleges in his decisions, particularly by cutting money for technology. She says it's ironic that a school in the heart of Silicon Valley must struggle to keep apace with advances in technology.
She said the majority of the high-tech workforce will come out of community colleges, but the colleges can't bridge the so-called "digital divide" without adequate money for technology.
"This is such a blow to access," Miner said.
The college will explore a few options to rectify the situation, according to Kanter and Miner. First, the administration will look to the student government to free up money for certain projects. Then, the institution will reach out to the community.
Kanter said she knows the community already approved money for the school through Measure E and that times have grown tough all around, but she hopes that they will rally around the college once again. "Hopefully they'll be sympathetic," she said.
The administrators also hope that legislators from the region will come to their aid and restore some of the lost funding. Miller said she believes officials who have more contact with the communities the colleges serve will step in to help.
"We're so hopeful that there will be action on the part of our state legislators," she said.
She reminds them, and the governor, that the colleges will remember this when it comes time to go to the polls in November.
The city of Cupertino escaped being hurt by the recent budget vetoes. Together with the League of California Cities, which lobbies in Sacramento on behalf of local governments, the city has breathed a sigh of relief that the budget did not include any major cuts to local authorities.
According to figures provided by the league, the state keeps $4.3 billion in property taxes every year that local governments, including counties and special areas, would like to see it return. City Manager David Knapp said the state's withholdings came about to fund education, but that they now exceed the need.
Knapp said he believes the state should return the extra funds while keeping enough to fund education. "That's just a basic fairness issue," he said.
The city gets its money primarily from business-to-business sales tax, the hotel occupancy tax, retail sales tax and property tax. The city receives two cents from each dollar of property tax collected, and one cent for every dollar spent from the retail sales tax.
Earlier in the year, the state removed $250 million in discretionary money given to local governments from the budget. When times get tough, said Megan Taylor, the league's director of communications, "our $250 million is one of the first things that gets whacked."
The discretionary income represents an important component of local government finances, since governments can use the money for anything they want instead of following a plan set by the state.
"What happened to us had already happened," Taylor said, referring to the discretionary fund cuts. The new budget vetoes don't affect cities adversely compared to the loss of the discretionary funds, she said.
The vetoes did include $15 million in farmworker and multifamily housing and homeless services and $62.5 million in legislative additions for park and habitat projects from bonds, but Taylor said the governor mainly cut local legislative pork-barrel projects.
The city largely agrees with Taylor's assessment. "[The vetoes] should not affect our budget the way it's currently designed," said Knapp.
When the city drew up its budget for the fiscal year 2001-2002, it categorized several sources of revenue as "at risk." This category included revenues such as utility tax fees collected by PG&E but paid to the city and funds received from the state, such as the vehicle license fee. Knapp said the city still considers the funds from the state at risk, but this most recent round of budget vetoes did not reveal how that risk might play out.
"We were happy with the budget in that they didn't cut [our funds] some more," Knapp said.
However, he added, just because it didn't happen this time, doesn't mean it won't the next. "I think the first thing they'll do is not backfill the vehicle license fee," he said.
The fee has represented a major concern for cities during the energy crisis. The state waived the vehicle license fee for the taxpayers, but continued to provide cities with the funds from the state's surplus. Now that the surplus has gone to pay for the state's energy needs, cities worry that they will lose what amounts to a major source of revenue.
For now, though, Knapp said, the city has let out a big sigh of relief.
"If the state doesn't damage us, I feel like we got off easy," he said.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
