CC League’s Annual Legislative Conference 'Wrap'

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(Community College League of Cal., Jan. 26, 2010)

The California Community College League just held its annual Legislative Conference. President and Chief Executive Officer Scott Lay reports:

The Budget News: No speaker or panel managed to escape talking about the state's fiscal situation, and many acknowledged that the Governor's budget may be optimistic and the "high water mark" for many state programs. Community colleges are a bipartisan priority, as we heard from State Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Assembly Republican Jim Nielson. We are better positioned than many other programs. However, while community college funding may not be further cut or even receive the governor's proposed increase for growth, the funding for UC and CSU may be overstated in the budget, which could result in a shift of even more students to already overenrolled community colleges.

Student fees: In the hallway conversations, the most spirited discussion was about student fees. What I heard were significant concurrent concerns about:

a) suggesting student fees are a better revenue source than broad-base tax extensions

b) "sticker shock" and the perception of affordability must be considered particularly now given the economy

c) cuts to the student service programs serving our most vulnerable and non fee-paying students might be worse than a fee increase

While some have absolute positions that fees should not change (or go down) or should go up to the national average (to enable funding to approach national average), most community college leaders appear in the middle. Regardless of the conclusion on the student fee level if needed to backfill cuts, there is still strong support for the concept of limiting fees to the change in per capita personal income, providing advance notice to students and institutions of any fee increase, and ensuring that students (and not the general fund) benefit if fees are increased.

The Legislature: As with every session, the panels with legislators and legislative staff could not hide the very difficult budget situation, which will curtail ambitious legislative agendas. Nevertheless, community colleges were uniformly encouraged to be innovative and focused on student success, and the doors were opened to rethink how we conventionally do things.