University of Iowa President on Budget Cuts

Forwarded Message:
Subj: [UnivAdm] Budget Update  Date: 10/9/2009 5:17:19 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time From: president@uiowa.edu Sent from the Internet (Details)


Dear Members of the University of Iowa Community:

I am writing to you with a budget update on the current 2010 Fiscal Year (FY).  The Revenue Estimating Conference (REC), which projects the state's revenues, has met, and the budget news is not good.  So far this year, state tax revenues are down $141.1 million compared to last year.  The REC now projects a $415 million deficit in the current year's state budget.  In response, Governor Chet Culver has issued a 10 percent across-the-board mid-year cut to all state agencies and departments.  For the Regents universities, that translates into a $59.8 million budget reversion for FY2010.  The UI's share of that budget reduction is $24.7 million.

These cuts will involve some very difficult decisions.  So far we have managed our budget reductions through a combination of methods and programs, including early and phased retirements, hiring freezes, and attrition, as well as reductions in supplies and services and in building renewal. While we will do all we can to continue making budget reductions along similar lines, this new reversion may have to involve what we have tried to avoid:  campus-wide layoffs and furloughs.

However, I want to assure all students, faculty, and staff: we will maintain our focus on our missions of providing a high quality educational experience, world-class research, and service to the state of Iowa.

Please let me put our current budget situation in some specific contexts, which also involve some promising developments.

As you probably know, our current fiscal year's budget already has incorporated a $35 million reduction in state appropriations, most of which impacts the General Education Fund (GEF).  This year, we were able to mitigate that reduction with a one-time influx of federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

We used $20 million to plug a number of budget gaps, and we are using $15 million for projects, funded by competitive grants, that would enhance new innovations while reducing recurring costs or increasing revenue streams in the coming years.

We have awarded $14 million of that funding, which we estimate will annually save us $2.6 million in direct costs and provide $2.7 million in net revenue.  While there is good news in these resulting cost savings and increased revenue, the fact remains that the ARRA funds are intended to be spent by the end of this fiscal year, and there is not likely to be additional funding for the next fiscal year.  As well, the state budget forecasts for FY2011 do not indicate a swift recovery, so we will no doubt face another significant reduction in state appropriations next year.

Our overall University budget involves several revenue streams, and there is good news on some of those horizons.  Our research enterprise remains robust.  Last year, we broke another external funding record with $429.5 million, a 10% increase over the previous year, keeping us within the top 20 public universities in research funding.  We also are grateful for the tremendous success of our ARRA grant applications.  We have received 128 such grants, totaling nearly $52 million over the next three years.

As well, our private fundraising has been very successful in the past year. Last fiscal year, thanks to the excellent efforts of the UI Foundation, we posted the second-best fundraising year in our history, totaling more than $200 million.  Our endowment has rebounded in recent months beyond our expectations, recovering to approximately the same level it was last year at this time before its value began falling.

However, these funding sources do not, for the most part, flow directly into the General Education Fund, which supports the basic educational functions of the University.  The state budget difficulties will affect the GEF for some time to come, perhaps permanently.  For that reason, strategic realignment of the University is necessary.  Under the direction of Provost Wallace Loh, the five-year extension and re-focusing of our strategic plan, The Iowa Promise, carries forward our priority of faculty vitality and folds in the priorities of focused excellence and student success.

By focusing excellence in research and graduate education and increasing undergraduate student success, we aim to reallocate resources to our greatest strengths, allowing for hiring of new faculty in interdisciplinary clusters to enhance and create focused research excellence.  Similarly, undergraduate student success efforts focused on enrollment and retention will allow for new tuition revenues to the General Education Fund.  The Strategic Initiatives Task Forces are continuing their work in this realignment effort, developing ideas that will further articulate our strategic vision as well as align budget allocations with academic planning.

In the past year and a half, the University of Iowa community has shown itself to be highly resilient to some of our most historic challenges, the Flood of 2008 and the worst economic difficulties of our generation.  That resilience comes in large part from the dedication of our students, faculty, and staff to continued achievement and excellence, as well as a deep commitment to the institution and to our students, colleagues, and the public we serve.  I thank you for all you have done to support our University in these challenging times.

The budget challenges still ahead of us are daunting and will likely require additional sacrifice.  But every time the UI has faced a crisis, our University community members have risen to the occasion.  I have no doubt that each of you will do so yet again.  As we move forward, I will keep you updated regularly whenever new information is available and new decisions are made.

I have every confidence that The University of Iowa will remain one of our nation's premier public universities and will emerge from the current economic challenges leaner yet stronger.  I am proud to be President of a University community that cares so deeply for its mission, for each other, and for the people it serves.

Sally Mason
President

Financial Woes at Yale

From: "Richard C. Levin" 
Date: September 10, 2009 12:31:22 PM PDT
To: Yale Alumni 
Subject: Yale President Levin Budget Update

Dear Alumni:

The Provost and I want you to have a copy of the letter we sent earlier this afternoon to faculty and staff providing the latest update on Yale’s response to the economic downturn.  You will see that we remain committed to our strong financial aid programs, as well as other University priorities, but we are seeking larger budget reductions.

With great appreciation for your ongoing support,

Sincerely yours,

Rick Levin
------
To:      The Faculty and Staff of Yale University

From:  Richard Levin and Peter Salovey

We write to apprise you of the University’s financial condition as we continue to work through the effects of the economic downturn.  We have been greatly impressed with the response of the Yale community.  Rather than wait to reduce expenditures until the current fiscal year began on July 1, many units achieved significant savings in the first half of this calendar year. Budget reductions were achieved with a spirit of cooperation and common purpose.

We explained in our messages to the community last December and February that we did not want to overreact to the downturn in financial markets by making reductions that might later prove unnecessary if markets recovered quickly.  Thus, the budget reductions we undertook eliminated most, but not all, of the deficits previously forecast for the years ahead. These forecasts assumed that the June 30, 2009, value of our endowment would be $17 billion.  Although the publicly traded portion of our endowment declined no further in value between December and June 30, we continued to incur losses in the value of our illiquid investments in private equity and real estate.  The precise final results for the 2008-09 fiscal year are still being compiled and will be announced later this month, but it is clear that we will report a June 30 value of the endowment of approximately $16 billion.  Only a small fraction of our endowment is invested in publicly traded securities, so the recent stock market rebound has not had a substantial effect on that number.  The bulk of our endowment remains invested in illiquid assets, which have not begun to recover their value.

Because we did not make a full adjustment to the initial decline in our endowment and because it has declined further since last December, we are now projecting a general appropriations deficit in the range of $150 million each year from 2010-11 through 2013-14.  Thanks to the work undertaken last year, these deficits are only half as large as the projections we faced last December, but they are still substantial and will require further budget adjustments.

Units of the University heavily dependent on endowment income will be especially affected. Because our spending rule spreads the impact of dramatic changes in the market value over time, the endowment payout for the current academic year declined only 6.7% from last year’s level.  But the payout will decline by approximately an additional 13% in 2010-11 and remain at that level for the next several years.  This estimate reflects our assumption that the endowment will remain flat during the current year and begin to grow after June 30, 2010, at the rate we have historically used in our budget modeling.

We will provide full details of the budget adjustments required for 2010-11 later in the year, but we want to alert you to the fact that another round of reductions will be necessary.  We also want to describe some of the actions we are undertaking now; other measures, still under consideration, will be outlined later.  We will not retreat from our important commitments to financial aid in Yale College and the Graduate School.  But with the exception of financial aid, no area of expenditure will be immune from close scrutiny.

As you know, construction projects that were already underway last December are being carried forward to completion.  Apart from the renovation of Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, urgently needed maintenance projects such as Harkness Tower, and essential cost-saving utilities projects, no major construction will proceed until funding is available from donor support or financial markets recover.  We have secured donor support to continue the design of the new residential colleges and to undertake site clearance, the first phase of which will occur this fall.  We also have secured full funding from donors for completing the renovation of the Yale University Art Gallery.  All other projects remain on hold.

Progress toward other important University priorities will be slowed as well. We will continue to recruit faculty to develop exciting new programs on the West Campus, because outstanding laboratory facilities are in place.  But we have set a pace that will trim our originally planned expenditures by more than 25% in the years immediately ahead.  We are also curbing our expenditure on the redesign and implementation of new administrative systems (the YaleNext project), by reducing the use of outside consultants, narrowing the scope, and slowing the pace of implementation.

Faculty recruitment will continue, but at a significantly reduced pace in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where more than 50 ladder faculty have been added over the past four years (an 8% increase) and about 100 ladder faculty members have been added over the past decade (a 17% increase).  As we move forward, we believe it would be imprudent to reduce the size of the faculty, only to increase it again to accommodate increased undergraduate enrollment when the new colleges open.  Some authorized searches and all new requests for searches to fill vacancies will be scrutinized carefully, however, and many will be deferred for a year or two.

Last winter we asked units to reduce both their staff and non-salary expenditures by 7.5% for the 2009-10 academic year, and we signaled that a further 5% reduction in non-salary expenditures would be called for in 2010-11.  To accelerate our movement toward budget balance, we are now asking units to achieve this additional 5% reduction in non-salary expenses during the current year.  We are counting on faculty, department managers, and others who control resources to curb nonessential expenditures on travel, entertainment, equipment, and supplies to the extent needed to achieve this target.

We are truly grateful for the support and cooperation that we have received in making these difficult adjustments.  We know that we can count on you in the year ahead to make tough choices among competing priorities, to identify non-essential activities that can be curtailed, and to seek ways to work across departmental lines to lower costs. We are attempting to negotiate these trying times without compromising the University’s commitment to maintaining the extraordinary quality and reputation of our teaching and research. Even as we defer some of our most important long-term investments, we will keep in focus our goals of maintaining the strength of Yale’s superb faculty, student body, and staff, and improving for everyone the experience of working in a community that contributes so much to the well-being of our city, the nation, and the world.

Decline of Caifornia Higher Education

California's higher education system could face decline

The state's budget cuts to the three-tiered system -- UC, Cal State and community colleges -- may threaten the system's world-class reputation and the future of a generation of students.

By Larry Gordon, Gale Holland and Mitchell Landsberg

July 31, 2009

California's master plan for higher education, the product of an era of seemingly limitless opportunity, was nearly 30 years old when Nicolette Lafranchi was born in 1988. By the time she turned 20 last year, the plan was working well for her, just as it had for tens of millions of students before her.

That's less true now.

In the wake of massive cuts in California's three-tiered system of public colleges and universities, Lafranchi discovered that she can no longer transfer from Santa Rosa Junior College to San Francisco State University in December, as she had planned, because midyear admissions were eliminated.

Nor is that necessarily her biggest problem. A fall statistics class she needs is full. Without it, she faces the possibility of forfeiting her health insurance, which requires her to carry at least 12 college credits. A scholarship she had been receiving was eliminated.

"It's a lot at one time," she said. "You know, it's kind of sad. You think it's the state of California and we're the next generation, we have to take over from the baby boomers, but we're going to be a group of uneducated people.

"It's not kind of -- it is sad."

California's higher education system, created to offer the opportunity for advancement to any resident, rich or poor, has seen hard times before. But the deep cuts imposed by the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this year are raising the question of whether the University of California, the California State University system and the nation's largest community college network can maintain their reputations for quality, or whether a public higher educational system that has been lauded as the world's finest may be in serious decline.

"This notion of the California dream, the idea that every adult could go to college, we've been hacking away at that during every recession for the past 25 years, and this year may well be it," said Patrick M. Callan, president of the San Jose-based National Center for Public Policy and Education. "We're coming out of this really tarnished."

The governor and legislative leaders acknowledge that the cuts will be devastating, but say they have no choice.

Already, campuses from Humboldt to San Diego are raising fees, shedding courses, slashing enrollment, and compelling faculty and staff to take unpaid furlough days. Class sizes are up, library hours are down, and long-held dreams for new programs and schools are on hold.

It's a far cry from the master plan's sweeping ambitions.

The state's college and university systems, which educate 2.3 million students annually, have roots in California's early days, but their modern history begins in 1960, when the educational plan was approved. It called for all state residents to have access to a tuition-free, public higher education, and outlined the mission of the three levels of colleges.

The higher education system has been credited with helping to shape and nurture California's economy and draw striving migrants from around the world.

"It had a magnet effect here for people who had ambitions for their children, that they could come to a place with good and virtually free public education all the way through college," said Richard White, an American history professor at Stanford University.

But White, who earned his bachelor's degree at UC Santa Cruz, said he is worried that the budget cuts and higher student fees could jeopardize that tradition. The state's public universities will remain "perfectly good universities but not what they were before." And that, he said, "is a real tragedy."

So how bad is it?

According to the Department of Finance, the state is expected to spend about $8.7 billion in general revenue funds on UC, Cal State and the community colleges in the coming fiscal year. That would be a 17% drop from two years ago, the department reported.

Federal stimulus money will offset some of that, but there remains much uncertainty about the level of funding from Washington, and how long it will last.

UC's state general revenue fund budget of $2.6 billion will be 20% less than it was two years ago. Cal State is seeing a similar percentage drop to about $2.3 billion.

California's community colleges are not taking quite as big a hit as the two university systems -- down 7% from the past two years, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office. But they are feeling the pain too. And the reductions come just as the recession is driving newly laid-off workers to their doors.

Students at UC and Cal State say they worry that the cutbacks will lengthen the time it takes to graduate.

UCLA civil engineering major Jesse Diaz, 20, had hoped to finish his bachelor's degree in four years, with one extra quarter, but now expects it will take him five years.

"It's a trickle-down effect and now I have to wait to get those classes," said Diaz, who grew up in Covina.

Critics of the UC administration contend that UC is purposefully aiming the cuts at undergraduates to increase political pressure, and should instead tap other income sources, including endowments and research grants.

"I think it's a really dangerous game and the students are already going to suffer," said Bob Samuels, a UCLA lecturer who is president of UC's American Federation of Teachers union. This week, Samuels was among 67 UCLA lecturers who received warnings that they might face layoffs next year.

Several analysts said they expect raids on UC's blue-chip faculty, many of whom face up to 10% salary cuts.

"Don't be surprised if they leave," warned Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Assn. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "There's a big difference between having 10 Nobel Laureates on campus and having none." (Actually, UC Berkeley now has seven, the most among the UC system's 10 campuses.)

UC's enormous reservoir of federal and private research grants, hospital revenues and its formidable fundraising operations shield it more than Cal State from the pain of the state's deficits. State funding accounts for less than one-sixth of the UC system's overall operating budget.

California State University has been complaining about funding shortfalls and rising student fees for most of the decade, but the main issue until this year was lack of support for growth.

Now, Cal State Chancellor Charles B. Reed frets about plans to reduce the system's enrollment by 40,000 over the next few years, from a current population of 450,000.

Cal State also has raised student fees by a total of 32% for the coming school year and is imposing 24 furlough days for all employees, including college presidents.

The University of California system has taken a series of belt-tightening steps, including reducing freshman enrollment by 6% and hiking undergraduate fees by 9.3%.

"Everything's being looked at. Everything's on the table," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "It will be a different place in a few years. We will be offering a smaller program."

He said he hoped that could be accomplished without diminishing the overall strength of the education, but said course offerings will be reduced about 10% this fall. Average class sizes will be about 60, up 20% from three years ago.

Throughout the UC system, which enrolls about 225,000 students and employs 180,000 faculty and staff, other austerities are underway. UC Davis is ending a program that trained veterinarians to become professors. UC San Diego has frozen faculty hiring. UC Berkeley has reduced library hours. And UC Riverside is considering delaying its plans for a new medical school.

UC President Mark G. Yudof said such painful steps do not mean the system has collapsed. "I don't think the sky has fallen yet," he said, "but I look at these trends and ask myself how long can you reduce course offerings and still hold your head up and say you are still offering students a high-quality education?"

Yudof and others say this is a time to consider fundamental changes in how UC works. Russell Gould, the Board of Regents chairman, is launching a commission to examine the university's future, including such ideas as: Should its campuses grow or shrink? Should they specialize in certain academic areas? Should majors or departments be reduced, merged or eliminated?

For now, UCLA chemistry professor Robin Garrell said, the campuses will live through this year's cuts.

"But," she said, "it's going to be hard to emerge whole or able to maintain that sense of optimism, the aggressive pursuit of discovery and innovation, and offer the innovative and wonderful experience for our students."

larry.gordon@latimes.com

gale.holland@latimes.com

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com

Chris Edley Op-Ed on UC Future (January 2005)

A Needy Boalt Hall Looks to Private Money

By Christopher Edley Jr.
Christopher Edley Jr. is dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.

January 17, 2005

Should we "privatize" parts of the University of California, as some have suggested? The mere mention of the idea is enough to start a war. In fact, I've learned never to use the term to describe the goals for my law school, Berkeley's Boalt Hall, because, frankly, it confuses more than illuminates.

But we do need to think about substantive structural changes in the way we do business. To understand how I view the future here at Boalt Hall, it is important to distinguish between our mission, our governance and our financing.

I am not interested in privatizing Boalt Hall's mission. The university's overall mission is to provide public access to world-class excellence at a bargain price. Unlike the UC undergraduate programs, we've never offered "mass" education — we're too small for that — but affordability has always been a top goal.

Yet the state is increasingly unwilling or unable to pay for excellence, so escalating tuition, partially offsetting neglectful appropriations, threatens to make the bargain a cherished memory.

Tuition for California residents at Boalt Hall, where I became dean last July, is about $22,000. That is roughly two-thirds of what Stanford and Harvard law schools charge, and double what Boalt charged just four years ago. Ten years ago, Boalt cost only a third of the top privates, and I regularly see alumni who, a generation ago, got three years of a world-class legal education for a total of $750.

So if we aren't mass, and the bargain is at risk, what is "public" about our mission? First, a great public law school must be inclusive to produce leaders for all communities and sectors. Higher tuitions forced by state cuts must be countered with strong financial aid policies and loan forgiveness for public interest graduates.

Second, we have an obligation to harness our excellence in teaching and research so that we can help tackle the toughest, most critical problems facing California, the nation and the world. The best lawyers are problem-solvers, and the best public law schools should be leveraging their intellectual capital to make a difference not just in the private sphere but in the public arena as well. Contributions that trickle by chance from a private university can, if we keep our eyes on the prize, flood forth from a great public one.

That's our public mission, and I don't intend to jeopardize it.

Nor do I want to privatize the way Boalt Hall is governed. I don't support ending the control of the regents and the Legislature over this or any other UC school. As much as I dislike the red tape and overregulation of a large public university, I welcome accountability.

But ultimately, what if Sacramento really won't fully fund our inviolate mission? Resources are vital; we can't do the job without them. The conclusion I've reached, at least for Boalt, is that we need a "burden-sharing" strategy, in which we persuade alumni and other private donors that our mission warrants their support — their investment — in creating leaders and solving problems that matter.

Sure, private fundraising has been on the rise at Boalt and throughout UC for some years. The dominant alumni mind-set, however, is that surely the state is paying to sustain the access and excellence that make us great, when that is no longer the case. Boalt is probably typical of UC in that a decent proportion of alumni do contribute, but in amounts that are dwarfed by private competitors. Yale Law School, with an alumni body comparable to Boalt's, has eight times as many professional fundraisers, and also eight times the endowment income per student.

We will change this. We will make the case not just to the state but to outside donors as well that having a world-class law school in a world-class research university is smart, and that it is worth supporting.

List your favorite examples of mind-bogglingly difficult challenges — racial justice at home; economic growth abroad; balancing security and liberty; exploiting breakthroughs in science and technology; making our diversity a source of strength, not hate. Meaningful progress on any of these will require the skills and imagination of terrific lawyers to craft the laws and the contracts, to design the institutions and policies, to structure our businesses and protect our rights. Great public law schools can make a difference.

Ultimately, the key to getting the private resources we need, ironically, is in vigorous pursuit of our public mission.

A starvation diet for higher education is like burning seed corn. For a state that has been all about the future, the explanation for such profound error can only be a mysterious civic disease of a terrible sort. I'm patient with prayer-based remedies but, meanwhile, the excellence of Boalt and other institutions requires private resources. Is that privatization? The word's misleading, but the need is clear.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Continuation: Berkeley Law Dean Tees Off on Petition Writers

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It's as if the authors read none of the news accounts of the budget battles over the past eight months; or the letters, videos and memoranda distributed widely by the President and Chancellors; or the invitations to town hall meetings and academic senate discussions. The implication that UC administrators and Regents have done too little to lobby the legislature and Governor is just provocative fantasy.

Things would be far, far worse had they not been as effective as they in fact were over successive rounds of state budget reduction exercises -- including the one going on around the clock right now. Are the petition authors ignorant of the other state cuts that will cause tremendous pain to the neediest families in the State? The suggestion that the proposed cuts be suspended is reckless because it simply means that deeper cuts (or higher fees) will be required over the remaining months of the fiscal year. As a law school dean, that frightens me. I know enough about the campus and System budgets to know that would create many more layoffs -- because such a huge proportion of UC expenditures are in salaries.

And, of course, zillions of alternatives have been considered and continue to be considered -- at UCOP and at multiple levels on every campus. That's been in the works since the mid-to-late 2008, when the economy tanked and yet another state budget crisis became inevitable.
The petition suggests . . . what? That masses of faculty and staff spend the time to become proficient in budget tradeoffs, and sensitive to competing values and goals? How practical is that? Delaying things in order to have another 20 town hall meetings and another 30 public
speakers at a future Regents meeting will accomplish nothing substantive, and almost nothing in governance terms.

I've only been in California and at U.C. five years. These problems are decades in the making, with head-in-sand, make-believe planning the principal response while threats to quality grew. The hysteria today is too little, too late, and badly misdirected. UC constituents must
do better at our politics and our planning. Stop protesting the present circumstances and start engaging vigorously about a different and better future. (As suggested by point 5 of the petition.)

Hurrumph.
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Continuation: Has the Leadership Given Up?

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Here is the text

Committee Chair Gould expressed his view that the State funding model was broken. The University must plan how to address this challenge in its academic planning and in securing future funding resources. The University has seen the erosion of State support over decades and cannot sustain excellence and access, given the broken promise of the State. . . .

President Yudof concurred that the funding model is broken. Ninety-eight percent of the University’s endowments are restricted. Students can only absorb a limited amount of the cost increases. There might be other inefficiencies to be removed from the system, but if present trends continued, he saw only two real alternatives. The first was a new role for the federal government, with an integrated higher education policy. This would be a new development; the government has sponsored research and access programs, regulations, and the G.I. Bill, but there has never been a national government policy on higher education. The second alternative would be to change the delivery model of the University, which is currently a hands-on, labor intensive delivery model. He has asked the faculty for ideas about how the University could deliver its services as well as it does, but at lower cost. This might involve use of the internet or other technology, less time to degree, and a change in practices regarding faculty workload and prerequisites. The University could not continue to function within current parameters. There is a need for reexamination of University operations.

A fragment of good news is that President Yudof is not flying the fundraising flag, and saying philanthropy can make up for lost public funding. Private money never did replace public money and never well. This realism is a welcome change.
On the other hand, Regent Gould and President Yudof both assume state funding will never recover. This means that they don't need to try to resurrect it, which is indeed something UC has never seriously done.

This continues the same non-leadership that helped dig the public funding hole in the first place. First UC refused to tell the public that the cuts that started in 1991 were seriously damaging something they needed and valued. Now they have given up.

The Yudof alternative:

1. a federal bailout of higher ed in general and of California in particular. This defies the entire history of decentralized higher ed in the U.S., including the Civil War-era Morrill Act tradition that created a cost-sharing partnership between the feds and the state in which the state was supposed to make major investments in a system that most directly benefited them.
   
2. education without faculty. Or not too many. $43,000 a year for UC's public law schools and distance learning for the undergraduate masses.

I read this as the end of the line of the last model, not the beginning of the new. The broken state model has to fixed, not thrown away. But it appears that we will need to re-philosophize and re-explicate the nature of knowledge creation and teaching for the heads of our own universities - so they don't replace all of us with robots.
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Memo From UCPB on Problems with UCOP Restructuring (2008)

NOTE: President Yudof and others continue to use the restructuring of the Office of the President as evidence both of effective cost-cutting and of their capacity to plan for the future. About half of the $67 million in alleged savings were in fact offloads of costs to other units. But the larger point is whether Though this memo was not endorsed by Academic Council, it reflects long study and deliberation by UCPB, and addresses an important planning issue for the University of California

Re: UCOP Restructuring
Fr. UC Systemwide Academic Senate Committee on Planning and Budget (UCPB)
Dt: Spring 2008

Summary

This memo seeks to make the case that Academic Council should articulate its own expectations for the outcome of the epochal transformation of UC’s Office of the President that is genreally known as “restructuring.” Over the course of this year, UCPB has repeatedly reviewed a range of restructuring documents, and has consulted on many occasions with a range of principal architects that includes Dan Greenstein, Rory Hume, Katie Lapp, and Michael Reese. Our lead finding is that the restructuring process, though generally positive, has strayed from its framing principles as outlined in three major documents, “The Blum Memo,” the “Monitor Report,” and the “Roles Report.” Our recommendation is that the Senate formally request that the President insure that OP restructuring reflects the careful and systematic implementation of the principles embodied in those guiding documents, defined as follows:

Academic Council should request that the Senate Chair communicate to the President our views on UCOP restructuring as follows (note that all “Principles” are defined in the text that follows this list of recommendations):

1. Council endorses the three documents’ emphasis on making UC planning and management more proactive, communicative, well coordinated, and long-term (Principles I and II).

2. Council endorses the general spirit of improved effectiveness behind the restructuring, including reorganization by function (Principle V). But it also believes that restructuring will succeed only if UCOP’s culture moves in the direction of “open collaboration” with various constituencies, including campus administrations and all levels of the Academic Senate (Principle IV).

3. Restructuring planning should not be driven by short-term budgeting. While quantitative measures are crucial benchmarks, they cannot substitute for functional analysis and design. In addition, care should be taken to support UCOP employees during the transition, and to support UCOP’s human resources in keeping with the values of humane treatment that universities generally espouse.

4. UCOP should recognize that “Systemwide Support Functions” are at least as important to the campuses as are “Presidential Support Functions.” Council recommends that UCOP see these functions as often intertwined. Council thus does not endorse Principles VI and VII, which put systemwide support in a subordinate position. UCOP should consider retaining and improving these, in keeping with much of the language of the Roles Report.

5. Prior to final decisions about service restructuring, UCOP should solicit systematic advice from a broad cross-section of the service-users of the campuses (and not only from their senior managers) as to which services should or should not be devolved, and how, and to what extent. Systemwide support should be devolved, cancelled, spun-off, downsized, or outsourced only in careful consultation with the current users of those services.

6. UCOP should not direct academic planning, but should focus on finding and developing resources to support the specific goals and the common ambitions of the campuses, and to coordinate and synthesize bottom-up goals across campuses. Given UCOP’s recent difficulties with playing constructive, supportive, coordinating roles with its academic programs, it should consider devolving all academic affairs to campuses, with UCOP’s role being taken over by a designated lead campus.

Definition of the Issue

The UCOP restructuring process began as an effort to reduce administrative costs by around $20-30 million a year while also improving operations. For many reasons, restructuring escalated into a rethinking of the entire function and status of UCOP, has resulted in operational cuts, a voluntary separation program, and layoffs, and is in the process of spinning off what had long been regarded as core service functions such as pension and benefits administration to third-party vendors or to individual campuses.

Many, perhaps most, of the restructuring changes are highly desirable. Examples of good changes are the consolidation of business support functions such as accounting and computing support, and the redesigning of the capital projects operation to reflect a streamlined, modernized capital projects approval process. Every campus has a long litany of complaints about the ineffectiveness and obtuseness of the old OP, and UCPB endorses the general practice of intelligent redesign of UCOP operation, as well as its timely implementation. We have also made every effort to offer “real-time” feedback to UCOP as part of our role in shared governance. In general we affirm the overall goals of UCOP restructuring, and see the dark clouds surrounding the University as having a silver lining of enabling new economies, new effectiveness, and new thinking in UC’s central administration.

But other aspects of the change have not been so obviously positive. As noted above, UCOP has issued a Request for Proposals to farm out Benefits to a 3rd-party vendor, and we have been unable to obtain any indications of service complaints or major operating problems that would justify the RFP: to the contrary, Benefits is an OP success story, highly popular with faculty and staff. It is not clear to us why UCOP would keep Human Resources – which gets less favorable reviews – while getting rid of Benefits. Similarly, sending Continuing Education at the Bar to Berkeley Law School gets 197 staff FTE off UCOP’s books but saves no money for the UC system through a program that was in any case financially self-sustaining; the change was not accompanied by any academic rationale or operations analysis that we know of. To take another example, UCOP is sending its own HR operations to UCSF, again with little obvious opportunity for cost saving or new efficiencies.

In addition, the process itself has posed problems for the Academic Senate. The changes noted above were announced as accomplished facts prior to any feedback from the relevant Senate standing committees. The possibility that changes in Institutional Research will reduce information for Senate standing committees’ below current levels was not carefully considered. UCPB is also very concerned about the loss of highly-experienced and well-qualified personnel, and about widespread reports of the lowered morale of the OP workforce that has resulted not simply from organizational change, but from a change process that has often appeared non-consultative and political. We have noted further than any problems with spin-offs and push-downs that are discovered later will be very difficult to reverse: these include the outsourcing of Human Resources and Benefits, and the delegation of a not-yet-clarified bundle of systemwide services to the campuses with possible new cost burdens for campus budgets. In keeping with the absence of advance notice, UCOP has not solicited formal review from the Academic Senate on the rationales, the processes, or the outcomes of the elements of an epochal transformation of the University’s structure. Academic Council has not yet offered a formal comment. Since UCPB has considered this issue in virtually every meeting this year, we now offer our overview of the process.

Analysis of the Restructuring Framework

The structuring process was defined by in three major documents, “The Blum Memo,” the “Monitor Report,” and the “Roles Report.” In what follows, we identify a series of principles that were articulated by these documents as a group.

The Blum Memo

The first document was Regent Blum’s memo on making UC “Strategically Dynamic” (August 2007). Its most critical points are the following:

I. Planning and budgeting need to be more systematic, proactive, and oriented toward multi-year time horizons.
II. Decision-making needs to be removed from its organizational “silos.” Chains of command need to be more clearly defined, while communication and coordination among them are rapidly improved.

These two principles were signaled by the memo’s key phrase, “strategically dynamic,” in which “strategic” means “undertaking clear, multi-year, and integrated planning,” and “dynamic” means ensuring an administrative infrastructure that is lean, nimble, and results-oriented, and . . . able quickly to adapt to changing circumstances.”

Over the years, UCPB and other Senate agencies have called for exactly these things (as have faculty and administrators around the UC system). In our view, these principles form a solid foundation for important administrative improvements.

Regent Blum made various specific suggestions, identified a process for discussion and implementation, and reserved his most direct criticism for the capital projects process - the arena of his sole outsourcing proposal. He also made another suggestion of particular relevance to the Senate:

III. The Academic Senate [should] undertake a parallel examination of its practices to see whether there are possible efficiency gains to be made in fulfilling the governance responsibilities delegated to them by the Regents.

This is also a valuable suggestion, and UCPB takes this up in a separate memorandum.

The Monitor Report

The first two principles reappeared in somewhat different form in the “Monitor Group Report to the Regents: University of California Organizational Restructuring Effort” (September 2007). This Report’s dominant theme was as follows:

The persistent underperformance of UCOP on several key dimensions has led to a broad lack of confidence on the part of the Regents and the campuses. As a result, both groups end up working around rather than through the central management structures of UCOP.

The Monitor Report itemized three aspects of this underperformance:

• Decision-making in UCOP is “not transparent”;
• UCOP “acts as gatekeeper rather than as partner”;
• “UCOP tends to impose solutions that do not meet campus needs and that add to their costs.”

This diagnosis led to a recommendation that was pervasive but implicit, and which we translate in this way:

IV. UCOP needs to move rapidly towards more flexible, “bottom-up” coordination of the system as a whole. This entails a major transformation of UCOP culture towards an organizational model that could be called “open collaboration.”

The Monitor Report’s comments on organizational culture, both explicit and implicit, get at the heart of both UCOP’s operational weaknesses and at the UC system’s worrisome “fragility” as an overall institution, as President Emeritus Robert Dynes put it in a recent meeting. It is hard for us to imagine UC recovering systemic strength and purpose without the kind of cultural change the Monitor Report invokes.

The Report describes a UCOP reorganization in 3 waves, and there are many specific suggestions with which we agree. Overall, the Report’s guiding conceptual principle is simply stated.

V. Reorganize UCOP by function, not by department.

It appears that UCOP has taken this latter principle seriously. We would emphasize, however, our conviction that little will be accomplished through functional restructuring without cultural change - change that will enable greatly improved circulation of information, higher levels of trust, and interactive forms of collaborative governance in a decentralized and complex university system. In other words, Principle 5’s success depends on the implementation of Principle 4.

The Roles Report

The third major document was written by a Working Group sponsored by the Regents’ Governance Committee, and appeared under the title of the “Report of the Working Group on the Roles of the Office of the President” (January 2008). Membership consisted of Senior Managers, Regents, one Senate representative, and members of the Monitor Group, and the report were produced without consultation with Academic Council or with the Senate’s standing committees.

The Roles Report differed from the other two documents in focusing on the structure and status of the executive authority of the President, the Regents, and the Chancellor. It established the following principles:

VI. UCOP’s first function is to “support the president in executive leadership of the university as a whole,” with emphasis on supporting the information needs of the Regents.
VII. UCOP’s “secondary function is to provide various services to the wider university community.”

This ranking of functions placed executive support ahead of systemwide service.

UCPB does not support this ranking: we believe, to the contrary, that the University as a system in fact rests on providing collaborative and effective systemwide services. The Roles Report appear on its face to be in some tension with the Blum Memo and the Monitor Report, for these clearly opposed a top-down approach to governance and called for UCOP to remake itself as an interactive collaborator with overall system.

In addition, the Roles Report does not streamline the President’s functions, but multiplies and solidifies four distinct functions, each of which is further divided into multiple activities.

These functions themselves deserve comment. Two of them are not controversial. “Guardian of the Public Trust” refers to legal responsibility for various kinds of regulatory compliance, ethical practice, and impartial public service. “Primary External Advocate” offers variations on the President’s obligation to represent the University’s interests and capabilities as a system.

But the two other functions identified in the Roles Report should be examined with particular care. “Chief Executive Officer” describes what could be mistaken for a centralized, top-down management command structure much like an old-style multidivisional corporation, and may sustain the unwieldy, authority-focused, risk-averse system that the Blum Memo and the Monitor Report criticized.

The fourth role is “Academic Leader of the Institution.” When elaborated in statements such as “the president defines and leads the execution of long-term plans for the university, following policies set by the Regents,” it appears to assimilate, with dubious propriety, the academic authority traditionally vested in the University’s faculty. The role of “Academic Leader” also lacks an empirical foundation. Historically, the University’s academic vision has been developed and implemented at the level of campus departments, divisions, colleges, and schools. The Roles Report offers no rationale for this idea of the President as a definer of academic missions. Nor does the idea appear to be practical, as it would place an impossible burden of intellectual invention and synthesis on the already-overtaxed top leadership of an enormous institution.

It is thus possible to read the Roles Report as contradicting the Blum Memo and the Monitor Report when it calls for a major augmentation of the President’s scope of action and “definitive decision-rights” exercised on behalf of the University. UCOP restructuring conflicts with an envisioned augmentation of executive authority, which could in turn lead to the concentration of UCOP resources on serving the President rather than serving the University.

At the same time, the Roles Report provides a useful categorization of UCOP’s administrative activity, and at several points (e.g. Figure 2) it affirms the continuing value of “Systemwide Support Functions.” Although the Roles Report puts systemwide support in a secondary position, it does call for UCOP to retain and enhance the latter under certain conditions, summarizable in this principle:

VIII. UCOP should retain service functions “for which there is a clear benefit to having one entity perform [them] on behalf of the entire system,” or when local functions “benefit from integration/coordination . . . across the system.”

Based on UCPB’s experience with UCOP, This principle implies that a high proportion of UCOP’s service functions should remain with UCOP, although in rationalized and streamlined form. Even the most obvious “bottom-up” exception – Academic Affairs, whose programs originate with individual faculty and programs – can benefit from multi-campus coordination where that coordination has become “flattened,” reciprocal, and interactive.

It is not clear to UCPB that the current implementation scheme is following this principle. To take one of our previous examples, Benefits administration would seem to be a paradigm of a function that serves the “entire system” in the same way, has not been found through functional analysis to be seriously flawed, and yet may be the first major function to experience outsourcing. UCPB believes that there is a real danger that the Presidential Support Functions could increasingly encroach on vital Systemwide Support Functions. This could have the unintended consequences of further damaging campus support for UCOP, and of reducing rather than improve the quality of service.

In sum, when it strays from the Blum Memo and the Monitor Report, the Roles Report has the potential to trap UCOP between the authority-focused executive, whose exertions of control are both costly and inefficient; and the minimalist service provider, in which campuses pay more to receive less service. UCOP could move towards a “worst of both worlds” scenario. This is certainly not inevitable, and is something that nobody wants. But it is an endpoint that is being made somewhat more likely by the haste of the restructuring process, the urgency granted to financial targets over functional redesign, and the Roles’ Report’s de-emphasis of UCOP’s systemwide service functions.

Our recommendations can be found at the top of this memo.

UC-AFT Exec Board Letter to President Yudof

The following letter to UCOP Labor Relations is the formal response of the UC-AFT Executive Board to an invitation to comment on the pay reduction/furlough proposal. It will also be posted on the Local 1474 website at berkeleyaft.org for your reference. MS

July 1, 2009

Shelley Nielsen
Interim Senior Director
Labor Relations
UC Office of the President
300 Lakeside Drive
Oakland, CA 94612

Dear Shelley:

I am responding on behalf of the UC-AFT Executive Board to the invitation our union received from your office to comment on the pay reduction/furlough plans proposed on June 17, 2009 by President Yudof.

First, UC-AFT expects that the University will fully honor all applicable labor law in its dealings with our units and our existing contracts.

Second, UC-AFT is not convinced that the University faces a fiscal emergency. While we recognize that state appropriations will fall dramatically for 2009-2010, we also wish to note that state general funds make up approximately 20 per cent of the University's entire budget.

California's fiscal meltdown does not mean that UC is suffering an equally dire crisis. Indeed, many University operations (i.e., auxiliary enterprises, hospitals) generate substantial profits for the institution and fundraising and capital expenditures remain robust. The union does not yet see the justification for across-the-board cuts in employee compensation.

Third, there is no adequate framework or process for consultation and debate about the existence of a "fiscal emergency" and the measures proposed to deal with such an alleged "crisis." President Yudof has asked the Regents to grant him an extremely vague set of "emergency powers." The Regents now appear to be poised to grant this new and untested authority to the President at the very same moment that the President seeks to declare a "fiscal emergency." These are not the conditions for informed deliberation, the mustering of expertise from all corners, and the building of a wide consensus throughout the University.

Fourth, UC-AFT is extremely concerned by the lack of transparency in the proposals put forward by President Yudof. We have been told that three options for pay reductions and/or furloughs at 8% and 4% will yield $195 million toward closing the gap in state funding. Clearly, cuts of this
magnitude to an entire payroll of over $9 billion will yield far more than $195 million. We understand that this lesser figure represents only savings in state funds. But this only begs the question: what will happen to the other savings recouped by this measure? We have asked for a complete accounting of all expected savings and how those funds will be allocated, but, to date, have received no response. UC-AFT absolutely cannot condone a reduction in compensation of any kind without full disclosure from UCOP as to how these funds will be directed.

Fifth, since this "crisis" is a crisis in state funding, we fail to understand why a large portion of the funds saved through any paycut/furlough measure apparently will not directed toward closing the state budget gap. We do not comprehend the logic of this plan. If a shortfall in state funds is justifying these measures, why won't the University use all possible savings from all possible forms of funding to alleviate this shortfall? It is our strong belief that all savings realized
from reductions in compensation should be used to protect the University's core teaching mission.

Sixth, we object strongly to the lack of any meaningful tiers in the structure of the proposed cuts. The plans as presently imagined will inflict substantial inequities and hardship to lower-earning UC workers. An 8% cut in salary to an employee who earns $46,100 is an enormous blow compared to an 8% cut in salary for an employee who earns $350,000. The tiering in any such program needs to be far more graduated and progressive, ranging from 0% for lowest paid workers to at least 20% for very highly compensated employees.

Seventh, we are very alarmed by the lack of forethought and planning that appears to have gone into this proposal. This proposal is for one year, but the conditions for a possible extension are not clearly elucidated.

Significant and obvious questions about how pay reductions and/or furloughs will affect pension and benefit eligibility are "under study."

Eighth, for our Professional Librarian unit only, IF pay reductions and furloughs ultimately face these employees, our members have an overwhelming preference for furloughs. To be instituted appropriately, the following measures must accompany any implementation: 1) any salary cuts due to furloughs must be spread over the entire period affected; 2) overall benefits eligibility, including pension eligibility, must not be affected by this measure; 3) furlough must be in increments of 8 hours; 4) furloughs should not be a "take-back" of holiday pay but should be separate non-holiday furlough days; and 5) there should be a discussion and negotiation between any affected librarian and his/her supervisor as to the reduction in work and related expectations that will accompany the furlough.

Ninth, for our Non-Senate Faculty unit only, IF pay reductions and furloughs ultimately face these employees, since lecturers' duties exceed the hours they are actually required to attend the campus, they would not benefit at all from a furlough program unless it included clearly defined changes to workload expectations on a case-by-case basis. Further, since most lecturers are compensated as part-time employees, any salary reductions must be calculated as a percentage of their actual compensation, as opposed to their annualized salaries.

Please transmit our union's views to President Yudof.

Sincerely,

Karen Sawislak
Executive Director
University Council--AFT

UC Scientists Letter to Gov Schwarzenegger

June 30, 2009

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

We are writing to you as members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and as professors at the University of California to express our deep concern about the latest round of proposed cuts to the UC budget. Current proposals being weighed by your office and the Legislature call for a 19% reduction from 2007-8 levels in state support for UC, producing an $800 million shortfall in the UC budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year. This will lead to increases in student fees, reductions in pay or furloughs for faculty and staff, and cuts in virtually all University services. These cuts will be devastating to every part of the University’s mission, but as scientists and engineers we are particularly concerned about their effects on the future of science and technology in California. While we recognize that our state faces an unprecedented financial crisis, the proposed cuts come on top of a decades-long trend of declining state support for the University of California.

The situation has reached a breaking point. Further cuts of the magnitude being contemplated in the latest round of budget proposals are likely to destroy UC’s status as the leading public university in the United States. This would undermine prospects for economic recovery and
damage California’s competitiveness for decades.

Before making a decision in the heat of a crisis that will have negative consequences for decades to come, we ask that you consider the following:

• It is estimated that 85% of per capita economic growth in the United States is due
to technological change(1), and the University of California has been a leading driver of that change. Productivity growth produced by UC technological innovation is estimated at $5.2 billion from 2002-11, leading to more than 100,000 new jobs in California.(2) For every dollar that California invested in research and development at UC in 2000-1, UC researchers brought in another $3.89 of private and federal research money.(3)

• UC trains the highly skilled workforce that drives California’s economy: 85% of
biotech firms(4) and 57% of research and development-intensive communications firms(5) in California employ holders of advanced degrees from UC. The cofounders of Intel, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, and MySpace all hold undergraduate or graduate degrees from UC.

• In 1970, the fraction of the state of California’s general fund devoted to UC was 7%.(6) By 2008-9 it had declined to 3.2%.(7) Thus further cuts to UC would come from a portion of the state budget that has already declined by more than a factor of two in past decades.

• Between 1990 and 2008, inflation-adjusted state support per UC student fell by 40%. As a result, the total inflation-adjusted education expenditure per UC student (including student fees and contributions from UC General Funds) decreased by 19%, while student costs rose by 138%.(8) Further cuts will hit disadvantaged and lower-middle-class students the hardest, since they rely on financial aid, outreach, gateway, and tutoring programs, all of which will be under
extraordinary pressure. This will inexorably reduce services to the component of California’s population most in need of a distinguished public university.

• UC’s status as a leading research institution depends on its ability to attract and retain the best scholars, but faculty salaries were already 12% below market as of 2006-7.(9) The salary reductions resulting from the proposed budget cut would widen the gap to 19%. UC will find it impossible to attract and retain leading faculty with a salary gap of this magnitude.

• The impact of salary cuts on young faculty, many of whom have mortgages that they are only barely able to pay now, is likely to be particularly devastating. If their salaries are cut and they are faced with the prospect of losing their homes, these future scientific leaders can and will move elsewhere. This will produce a huge brain drain from California.

• If this damage is done, it will not be easy to undo. Even if UC salaries and research support were to recover after the crisis passes, it would take years to replace the professors who leave, and many of the investments that have been made in research and teaching programs would be irrevocably lost. Even worse, worries about the stability of funding and the safety of jobs at UC would hinder efforts to recruit talented scholars and teachers for years or even decades to come.

For the past 40 years, California has been struggling to run a world-class university on ever-declining state support. In the face of the current crisis, the past strategy of incremental cuts at the margin will no longer be viable, and major changes will be set in motion. The actions of the Governor and the Legislature in coming weeks will be seen, both by the scientists currently employed by UC and by the young researchers who will consider moving here in the next decade, as a clear statement of whether the state of California intends to maintain a leading research university or not. If it does not, California must be prepared to accept the long-term loss of educational, economic, and technological benefits that UC produces. The forefront of innovation will move elsewhere. This is the prospect with which we are now faced. In a time of crisis, our attention rightly focuses on using limited resources to meet the needs of the moment. However we must remember that the University of California represents our state’s investment in the future. When the crisis passes and we begin to repair the damage, our prospects for success will be determined by how well we protect that investment today.

Sincerely,

(Signatories are identified by their National Academy affiliation: National Academy of
Engineering [NAE], National Academy of Sciences [NAS], or Institute of Medicine
[IOM].)

John Abelson (NAS)
Adjunct Professor, Deparment of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC San Francisco
David A. Agard (NAS)
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC San Francisco
Howard Hughes Medical Investigator
Alice Merner Agogino (NAE)
Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Guenter Ahlers (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Santa Barbara
Satya N. Alturi (NAE)
Professor, Center of Aerospace Research and Education, UC Irvine
Walter Alvarez (NAS)
Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley
Ronald M. Andersen (IOM)
Wasserman Professor Emeritus, Departments of Health Services and Sociology, UCLA
John C. Avise (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC Irvine
Francisco J. Ayala (NAS, National Medal of Science Laureate)
University Professor
Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences
Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science, School of Social Sciences, UC Irvine
George Backus (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Geophysics, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC
San Diego
Ruzena Bajcsy (IOM, NAE)
Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Director Emeritus, CITRIS, UC Berkeley
John Bowers (NAE)
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director, Institute for Energy Efficiency, UC Santa Barbara
Rafael L. Bras (NAE)
Distinguished Professor and Dean, Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Irvine
Robert G. Bregman (NAS)
Professor, Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
Eric A. Brewer (NAE)
Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Steven P. Briggs (NAS)
Professor, Section of Cell and Developmental Biology, Division of Biological Sciences,
UC San Diego
Bob B. Buchanan (NAS)
Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, UC Berkeley
Thomas F. Budinger (NAE, IOM)
Professor of the Graduate School, UC Berkeley
Professor Emeritus, UC San Francisco
Home Secretary, NAE
Patricia A. Buffler (IOM)
Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
William E. Bunney, Jr. (IOM, NAS)
Senior Associate Dean for Research, School of Medicine
Distinguished Professor, Della Martin Chair, Department of Psychiatry, UC Irvine
Michael Callaham (IOM)
Professor and Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine, UC San Francisco
John E. Casida (NAS)
Professor of Toxicology and Entomology
Director, Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology Laboratory, UC Berkeley
Webster K. Cavanee (IOM, NAS)
Professor, Department of Medicine, UC San Diego
Director, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, San Diego
David Chandler (NAS)
Professor, Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
Anil K. Chopra (NAE)
Horace, Dorothy, and Katherine Johnson Professor, Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley
Alexandre Chorin (NAS)
University Professor
Professor, Department of Mathematics, UC Berkeley
Maarten J. Chrispeels (NAS)
Professor, Division of Biological Sciences
Director, Center for Molecular Agriculture, UC San Diego
James E. Cleaver (NAS)
Professor Emeritus of Dermatology and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Department of
Dermatology, UC San Francisco
Michael T. Clegg (NAS)
Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, UC Irvine
Foreign Secretary, NAS
John A. Clements (NAS)
Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, UC San Francisco
Julius H. Comroe, Jr., Professorof Pulmonary Biology, Emeritus
Member, Graduate Group in Biophysics, Retired
Lasker Prize Awardee, Royal Society of Physicians of London
Don W. Cleveland (NAS)
Professor and Chair, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, UC San Diego
Head, Laboratory of Cell Biology, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
Thomas W. Cline (NAS)
Professor of Genetics, Genomics, and Development, Department of Molecular Biology,
UC Berkeley
Thomas J. Coates (IOM)
Michael and Sue Steinberg Professor of Global AIDS Research
Distinguished Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine,
UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine
Phillip Colella (NAS)
Senior Staff Scientist, Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory
Eugene D. Commins (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
David E. Culler (NAE)
Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Shaun R. Coughlin (NAS, IOM)
Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology
Director, Cardiovascular Research Institute, UC San Francisco
Marc Davis (NAS)
Professor, Departments of Physics and Astronomy, UC Berkeley
Russ E. Davis (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Haile T. Debas (IOM)
Professor of Surgery
Former Dean of the Medical School
Former Chancellor, UCSF
James Demmel (NAE)
Professor, Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and
Mathematics, UC Berkeley
William E. Dietrich (NAS)
Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, UC Berkeley
Greg Duncan (NA Education)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Education, UC Irvine
Thomas Dunne (NAS)
Professor, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and Department of
Earth Science, UC Santa Barbara
Robert C. Dynes (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Chancellor Emeritus, UC San Diego
President Emeritus, University of California
Sandra M. Faber (NAS)
University Professor
Astronomer, University of California Observatories
Professor and Chair, Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz
Juli Feigon (NAS)
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA
Alexei V. Filippenko (NAS)
Professor, Department of Astronomy, UC Berkeley
2006 Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year
Robert Fischer (NAS)
Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, UC Berkeley
Glenn H. Fredrickson (NAE)
Professor, Departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials
Director, Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials, UC Santa Barbara
Inez Fung (NAS)
Professor, Departments of Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science,
Policy, and Management
Co-Director, Berkeley Institute of the Environment, UC Berkeley
Mary K. Gaillard (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Bruce C. Gates (NAE)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science,
UC Davis
Arthur Geoffrion (NAE)
James A. Collins Chair in Management Emeritus, Anderson School of Management,
UCLA
Andrea Ghez (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Institute for Geophysics and
Planetary Physics, UCLA
Kathleen M. Giacomini (IOM)
Professor and Co-Chair, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, UC
San Francisco
Linda C. Giudice (IOM)
Professor and Chair, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences,
UC San Francisco
Robert B. Goldberg (NAS)
Distinguished Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Department of Molecular,
Cell, and Developmental Biology, UCLA
Richard E. Goodman (NAE)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil Engineering, UC Berkeley
Paul R. Gray (NAE)
Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Warner C. Greene (IOM)
Director, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology
Nick and Sue Hellman Distinguished Professor of Translational Medicine
Professor of Medicine, Microbiology, and Immunology, UC San Francisco
President, Accordia Global Health Foundation
John Greenspan (IOM)
Professor of Oral Pathology, Department of Orofacial Sciences, School of Densitry
Director, AIDS Research Institute, School of Medicine, UC San Francisco
David Gross (NAS, Nobel Laureate)
Professor, Physics Department
Director, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara
Melvin M. Grumbach (IOM, NAS)
Edward B. Shaw Professor of Pediatrics, Emeritus, UC San Francisco
Christine Guthrie (NAS)
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, UC San Francisco
American Cancer Society Research Professor of Molecular Genetics
E. A. Hammel (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Departments of Demography and Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Bruce D. Hammock (NAS)
Distinguished Professor of Entomology, UC Davis
Director, Cancer Center, UC Davis Medical Center
Director, NIEHS-UC Davis Superfund Basic Research Program
Principal Investigator, NIH Biotechnology Training Program, UC Davis
James Hartle (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Santa Barbara
Donald R. Helinski (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Molecular Biology, UC San Diego
George M. Homsy (NAE)
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Santa Barbara
Director, Institute for Multiscale Materials Systems, Los Alamos National Laboratory /
UC Santa Barbara
John David Jackson (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Anthony A. James (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Departments of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and
Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, UC Irvine
Robert B. Jaffe (IOM)
Fred Gellert Professor of Reproductive Medicine and Biology, Center for Reproductive
Sciences, UC San Francisco
David Jewitt (NAS)
Professor, Department of Earth and Space Sciences and Institute for Geophysics and
Planetary Physics, UCLA
Eward G. Jones (NAS)
Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Director, Center for Neuroscience, UC Davis
David Julias (NAS)
Morris Herzstein Chair in Molecular Biology and Medicine
Professor and Chair, Department of Physiology, UC San Francisco
Ronald Kaback (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Departments of Physiology and Microbiology, Immunology,
and Molecular Genetics, UCLA
Ivan P. Kaminow (NAE)
Adjuct Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC
Berkeley
Bell Labs (retired)
Bill Kastenberg (NAE)
Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor Emeritus, College of Engineering, UC
Berkeley
Randy H. Katz (NAE)
Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Charles F. Kennel (NAS)
Distinguish Professor Emeritus, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, UCLA
Former Director, Dean, and Vice-Chancellor of Marine Sciences, Scripps Institute of
Oceanography, UC San Diego
Former Executive Vice-Chancellor, UCLA
James P. Kennett (NAS)
Professor Emeritus and Research Professor, Department of Earth Science and Marine
Science Institute, UC Santa Barbara
John Kim (NAE)
Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UCLA
C. Judson King (NAE)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemical Engineering
Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education
Provost and Senior Vice President, Academic Affairs, Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Talmadge E. King (IOM)
Julius R. Krevans Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine
Chair, Department of Medicine, UC San Francisco
Patrick V. Kirch (NAS)
Class of 1954 Professor Anthropology and Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley
Leonard Kleinrock (NAE, National Medal of Science Laureate)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Computer Science, UCLA
Judith P. Klinman (NAS)
Joel Henry Hildebrand Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
U. Fred Kocks (NAE)
Retired Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Affiliate, UC San Diego
Mary Anne Koda-Kimble (IOM)
Professor and Dean, School of Pharmacy
TJ Long Chair in Community Pharmacy Practice, UC San Francisco
Richard Kolodner (NAS)
Professor of Medicine, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, UC San Diego
Robert Kraft (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz
Edward J. Kramer (NAE)
Professor, Departments of Materials and Chemical Engineering, UC Santa Barbara
Sydney Kustu (NAS)
Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, UC Berkeley
J. Clark Lagarias (NAS)
Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Davis
James S. Langer (NAS)
Research Professor, Department of Physics, UC Santa Barbara
Former Vice President, NAS
Robert Langridge (IOM)
Professor Emeritus, UC San Francisco
L. Gary Leal (NAE)
Katharine and Warren Schlinger Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemical
Engineering, UC Santa Barbara
Ronald Lee (NAS)
Professor, Department of Demography
Jordan Family Professor, Department of Economics
Director, Center for the Economics of Demography and Aging, UC Berkeley
George Leitmann (NAE)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Stephen R. Leone (NAS)
Professor, Departments of Chemistry and Physics, UC Berkeley
Director, Chemical Dynamics Beamline, Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory
Peter Li (NAS)
Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Mathematics, UC Irvine
Thomas M. Liggett (NAS)
Professor, Department of Mathematics, UCLA
Robert P. Lin (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics
Director Emeritus, Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley
Dan L. Lindsley (NAS)
Research Professor of Biology, UC San Diego
Elizabeth Loftus (NAS)
Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior, Criminology, Law and
Society, and Cognitive Sciences, School of Law, UC Irvine
Steven G. Louie (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
John D. Mackenzie (NAE)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UCLA
Geoff Marcy (NAS)
Professor, Department of Astronomy, UC Berkeley
James L. McGaugh (NAS)
Research Professor, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, UC Irvine
Robert McMeeking (NAE)
Professor, Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials, UC Santa Barbara
Christopher F. McKee (NAS)
Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Physics, UC Berkeley
James C. McWilliams (NAS)
Professor and Chair, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and Institute of
Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA
Michael Merzenich (IOM)
Professor Emeritus of Otolaryngology, UC San Francisco
Barbara J. Meyers (NAS)
Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
William H. Miller (NAS)
Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemisty, UC Berkeley
William Munk (NAS)
Secretary of the Navy Chair in Oceanography, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, UC
San Diego
Richard S. Muller (NAE)
Professor in the Graduate School, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Director and Co-Founder, Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE/ASME Journal of MEMS
Life Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Systems
William Murdoch (NAS)
Charles A. Storke II Professor of Ecology, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and
Marine Biology, UC Santa Barbara
Hiroshi Nikaido (NAS)
Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Masayasu Nomura (NAS)
Grace Bell Professor of Biological Chemistry, Department of Biological Chemistry, UC
Irvine
Robert L. Nussbaum (IOM)
Holly Smith Professor of Medicine
Chief, Division of Medical Genetics, UC San Francisco
Donald Olander (NAE)
James Fife Chair in Engineering, Emeritus
Professor, Graduate School
Professor Emeritus, Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley
Jerrold Olefsky (IOM)
Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Associate Dean for Scientific Affairs, School of Medicine, UC San Diego
José Nelson Onuchic (NAS)
Professor and Co-Director, Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC San Diego
Stanley Osher (NAS)
Professor, Deparments of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering,
UCLA
Director of Special Projects, Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA
Larry E. Overman (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Chemistry, UC Irvine
David A. Patterson (NAE, NAS)
Pardee Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Director, Reliable Adaptive Distributed Computing Laboratory
Director, Parallel Computing Laboratory, UC Berkeley
Stanton J. Peale (NAS)
Professor Emeritus and Research Professor, Department of Physics, UC Santa Barbara
Saul Perlmutter (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Linda Petzold (NAE)
Professor, Department of Computer Science and Department of Mechanical Engineering,
UC Santa Barbara
Karl S. Pister (NAE)
Dean and Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Chancellor Emeritus, UC Santa Cruz
P. Buford Price (NAS)
Professor, Graduate School, UC Berkeley
Louis J. Ptáček (IOM)
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Coleman Distinguished Professor of Neurology
Director, Division of Neurogenetics, UC San Francisco
Stanley B. Prusiner (IOM, NAS, Nobel Laureate)
Professor, Department of Neurology
Director, Institute for Nondegenerative Diseases, UC San Francisco
Peter H. Quail (NAS)
Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
Director of Research, Plant Gene Expression Center, UC Berkeley
Yahya Rahmat-Samii (NAE)
Distinguished Professor, Northrup-Grumman Chair in Electromagnetics, Department of
Electrical Engineering, UCLA
Alexander S. Raikhel (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Entomology, UC Riverside
Marina Ratner (NAS)
Professor, Department of Mathematics, UC Berkeley
Arthur L. Reingold (IOM)
Professor and Division Head, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
David L. Rimoin (IOM)
Director, Medical Genetics Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Professor, Departments of Pediatrics, Medicine, and Human Genetics, David Geffen
School of Medicine, UCLA
Jasper Rine (NAS)
Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
Director, Center for Computational Biology, UC Berkeley
John Roth (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Microbiology, UC Davis
Donald G. Saari (NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Departments of Economics and Mathematics
Director, Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, UC Irvine
Jerome L. Sackman (NAE)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley
Robert F. Sawyer (NAE)
Class of 1935 Professor of Energy Emeritus, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UC
Berkeley
Randy Scheckman (NAS)
Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Editor-in-Chief, Proceedings of the NAS
Geert W. Schmid-Schoenbein (NAE)
Distinguished Professor
Bioegineer, Department of Bioengineering and Medicine, UC San Diego
Gerald Schubert (NAS)
Distinguished Professor of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Department of Earth and
Space Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UCLA
James A. Sethian (NAE)
Professor, Department of Mathematics
Director, Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UC Berkeley
Head, Mathematics Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
S. Jonathan Singer (NAS)
University Professor Emeritus
Professor Emeritus of Biology, UC San Diego
Robert Sinsheimer (NAS)
Professor Emeritus of Biology, UC Santa Barbara
Chancellor Emeritus, UC Santa Cruz
William A. Sirignano (NAE)
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering, UC Irvine
Soroosh Sorooshian (NAE)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Director, Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS), UC Irvine
Hyron Spinrad (NAS)
Professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Berkeley
Larry R. Squire (NAS, IOM)
Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, UC San Diego
Kirk R. Smith (NAS)
Professor of Global Environmental Health, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Judith Stern (IOM)
Distinguished Professor, Departments of Nutrition and Internal Medicine, UC Davis
Shelley E. Taylor (IOM, NAS)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology, UCLA
Matthew Tirrell (NAE)
Richard A. Auhil Professor and Emeritus Dean, College of Engineering, UC Santa
Barbara
Waldo Tobler (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, UC Santa Barbara
George H. Trilling (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
J. Anthony Tyson (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, UC Davis
Pravin Varaiya (NAS)
Professor, Department of Electical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley
James W. Valentine (NAS)
Professor Emeritus, Department of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley
Joan Selverstone Valentine (NAS)
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UCLA
Ajit P.Varki (IOM)
Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Co-Director, Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA)
Co-Director, Glycobiology Research and Training Center
Associate Dean for Physician-Scientist Training, UC San Diego
Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli (NAE)
Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair, Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science, UC Berkeley
Kenneth W. Wachter (NAS)
Professor, Departments of Demography and Statistics, UC Berkeley
Peter Walter (NAS)
Professor of Biochemistry, UC San Francisco
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
James A. Wells (IOM)
Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Professor, Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, UC San Francisco
Arthur Weiss (IOM)
Ephraim P. Engleman Distinguished Professor
Chief, Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, UC San Francisco
Howard Hughes Medical Investigator
Jonathan Weissman (IOM)
Professor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, UC San Francisco
Michael Witherell (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Santa Barbara
Jack Keil Wolf (NAE)
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UC San Diego
Stanford E. Woosley (NAS)
Professor, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz
William W-G. Yeh (NAE)
Distinguished Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UCLA
T. Yilma (NAS)
Distinguished Professor of Virology
Director, International Lab of Molecular Biology, UC Davis
Patricia Zambryski (NAS)
Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, UC Berkeley
Bruno Zumino (NAS)
Professor, Department of Physics, UC Berkeley
Cc: University of California President Mark Yudof
Speaker Karen Bass
Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee
Assembly Member Noreen Evans
Assembly Member Connie Conway
Assembly Member Kevin de Leon
Assembly Member Jim Nielsen
Assembly Member Anthony Portantino
President Pro Tem Senator Darrell Steinberg
Minority Leader Senator Dennis Hollingsworth
Senator Denise Ducheny
Senator Robert Dutton
Senator Abel Maldonado
Senator Mark Leno
Senator Mimi Walters
Senator Gloria Romero
Senator Robert Huff

NOTES

1 “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future”, report of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2007, pg. 1. Available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11463.

2 “California’s Future: It Starts Here”, a study of the University of California’s impact on California, 2003, pg. 6. Available at http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/itstartshere/report/fullreport.pdf.

3 Ibid, pg. 7.

4 “Assessing the Role of the University of California in the State’s Biotechnology Economy: Heightened Impact Over Time”, Industry-University Cooperative Research Program Working Paper Series, C. Yarkin & A. Murray, 2003, pg. 9. Available at http://ucdiscoverygrant.org/about/reports_ca.htm.

5 “The Role Of University Of California Scientists and Engineers In The State’s R&D-Intensive
Communications Industry”, Industry-University Cooperative Research Program Working Paper Series, C. Yarkin & A. Murray, 2003, pg. 3. Available at http://ucdiscoverygrant.org/about/reports_ca.htm.

6 Larry Hershman, 2005-06 Budget Presentation Regents meeting, November 2004.

7 UC Budget summary, available at http://www.ucsc.edu/budget_update/article.asp?pid=2991.

8 University of California 2009-10 Budget for Current Operations, Summary of the Budget Request, pg. 5, available at http://budget.ucop.edu/pubs.html.

9 “Faculty Salaries at California’s Public Universities, 2007-8”, California Postsecondary Education
Commission Report, pg. 9. Available at http://www.cpec.ca.gov/completereports/2007reports/07-15.pdf.

California's problem is spending? That's a myth

MIchael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times

May 28, 2009

A reader writes:

" California's problem is mainly on the spending side. If we stuck to a budget increase of inflation plus population growth over the last 10 years, we would probably be in fairly decent shape."

Sounds right, doesn't it? The same perfectly reasonable supposition was expressed in scores of e-mails I received following last week's budget ballot debacle.

Indeed, the idea that California's budget has been out of control as measured against inflation and population growth is a deeply cherished talking point in the debate over the state's fiscal deficit.

---

FOR THE RECORD: Michael Hiltzik's Tuesday column on the California budget cited an incorrect estimate of 30% for state population growth from 1998 through 2009. The correct figure, based on population estimates from the state Department of Finance, is about 15%. But the finding by the legislative analyst's office that the state budget remained in line with population growth and inflation during that period, on which the column was based, relied on the correct multiplier of population growth.

---

Unfortunately, it turns out to be yet another infectious myth. The truth is that over the last 10 years, California's spending has tracked population growth and price increases almost to the penny.

This finding comes from the nonpartisan legislative analyst's office, which subjects the state budget to more careful scrutiny than almost anyone else in Sacramento.

Analyzing the 2008-09 budget bill last year, the legislative analyst determined that since 1998-99, spending in the general fund and state special funds -- the latter comes from special levies like gasoline and tobacco taxes -- had risen to $128.8 billion from $72.6 billion, or 77%.

During this time frame, which embraced two booms (dot-com and housing) and two busts (ditto), the state's population grew about 30% to about 38 million, and inflation charged ahead by 50%. The budget's growth, the legislative analyst found, exceeded these factors by only an average of 0.2% a year.

My calculations show that the combined growth factors would have allowed the budget to grow even more. But for the purpose of argument, let's use the legislative analyst's more conservative number. That punctures the notion that the state has been on a drunken spending spree out of proportion to these common multipliers.

A couple of caveats are in order. These budget figures don't include federally backed spending. Gov. Schwarzenegger's '08-09 budget included $56 billion in federal funds, mostly for health and social services programs such as Medi-Cal.

Nor do they include spending of bond proceeds or the various borrowing scams the governor and Legislature implemented, such as dipping into local government coffers.

The inflation factor, further, isn't the consumer price index, which rose about 35% over the period, but a separate federal index of state and local purchases. This makes sense because the state buys relatively less of what's measured by the CPI, like bread and hamburger meat, and relatively more of what's measured by the government index, like healthcare, heavy equipment and educated workers.

That said, it's worth examining where the state does spend money, and why.

To dispense with a common bugaboo, yes, the state spends plenty on illegal immigrants. How much is impossible to specify because no one knows how many live in the state or what services they use.

My colleague George Skelton recently estimated this cost, net of the federal government's skinflint contribution, at some $5 billion a year. As he observed, undocumented workers contribute plenty in taxes, too.

I would further add that we employ these people to tend our farms and gardens, build our homes and help raise our children.

In any event, far more blame for the deficit belongs to California voters. Year in, year out, they enact spending mandates at the polls, often without endowing a revenue source.

"Budget management really is in the hands of the voters," says Assembly Budget Committee Chairwoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), who recently posted a video online cogently outlining the dysfunctional budget process.

Some of these programs have hidden costs -- well, not so deeply hidden. The three-strikes law saddled the state with hundreds of millions in costs to prosecute and jail thousands of innocuous defendants. After Proposition 63 expanded mental health services in 2004, the Mental Health Department's budget expanded from $370 million to $1.5 billion.

From 1998 to the present, by my count, voters passed 27 separate bond issues to pay for school buildings, libraries, hospitals, highways, a high-speed rail system, stem cell research, veterans facilities, clean water and air, and more. These may be mostly worthy amenities, but that doesn't mean they pay for themselves.

Since 2000, the legislative analyst's office reports, $85 billion in such borrowing has been authorized at the ballot box -- half of it in 2006 alone. Annual payments on these bonds have climbed from $2.5 billion in 1998 to more than $5 billion this year.

Then there's budgetary borrowing, those little subterfuges so favored by our political leaders, which include the $15-billion deficit bond issue of 2004, the governor's version of a credit card max-out binge.

Debt service on those borrowings rings in at more than $4.2 billion this year and next.

Every one of these items was approved at the polls. But here's the real scandal of the California budget: Not a single one received the support of a majority of eligible voters.

That's because most voters are harder to get off their duffs than Homer Simpson. The California voter's default approach to the ballot is a sort of militant apathy.

Only about 70% of eligible voters even register, and it's rare for even 40% of the eligible to turn out. Undoubtedly many of them have better things to do with their time on election day, like shriek about politicians on talk radio and write profane e-mails to the newspapers.

The share of all eligible voters who cast a ballot on May 19 was 19%. Do the math on the 65% "no" vote on the key measures, and you find that it translates to about 12.5% of the California electorate.

This makes a mockery of Schwarzenegger's claim that the election delivered a "loud and clear" message. What message? Proposition 1A, if passed, would have extended a parcel of tax increases for an additional two years. Who's to say that the 81% of eligible voters who just stayed home didn't intend to endorse the tax increase?

But rather than blame the state's fiscal condition on illegal immigrants or unthrifty politicians, they should blame their own stupefied -- or is it embarrassed? -- silence.