The first house fiscal deadline of June 1 is quickly coming up and the CSU is actively tracking some 200 measures in the Senate and the Assembly.

As both houses’ appropriations committee meet and hear measures they start the process of placing measures that have been identified as costing the State $150,000 or more on their suspense file (at the discretion of the appropriations staff). During this last week of May these committee’s will hear their suspense calendar, and will announce whether a measure is being amended to reduce costs, released as is, or is being held due to costs.

Here are some of the highlights of the 109 measures that the CSU Office of Advocacy and Institutional Relations is tracking that have so far gone to suspense:

The Board of Trustee’s Assembly Bill 302, authored by Assembly Member De La Torre is the only CSU sponsored measure on suspense this year. This measure seeks to provide Cal Grant B recipients with fees/tuition in their first academic year targeting greater aid to lower income students who need assistance to pursue their college objectives. It was estimated that to provide all Cal Grant B recipients funds in their first year would cost $78 million.

There are several options to manage the cost of the bill, including phasing it in over several years. Assembly Member De La Torre and CSU staff are currently working together to create a plan that would address this fiscal concern while at the same time continue to address the needs of the students receiving Cal Grant B’s.

Assembly Member Anthony Portantino has introduced legislation on behalf of the California Faculty Association, Assembly Bill 1413, which proposes to add two new members to the Board of Trustees, each appointed by the Senate and the Assembly. It also would allow the ex-officio members to send an employee in their place to serve as their proxy. In addition to these changes to the Board of Trustees composition, the Master Plan for Education calls for the Board of Trustees to be a lay board. The measure also places restrictions on employment contracts for the CSU executive officers and requires that any contract and its terms be adopted by resolution at a board meeting of the CSU Trustees, which is essentially current law. The measure also calls for a comprehensive review of faculty compensation and requires the CSU to make numerous financial reports that are inconsistent with current accounting and auditing standards.

The Assembly Appropriations staff reported that if expenditure reporting requirements are incompatible with what the segments' currently reporting systems, there could be significant costs, in the millions of dollars for the University of California (UC), CSU, and the California Community College (CCC), to modify those systems or otherwise collect the required expenditure data. It also noted that the CSU could incur millions of dollars in costs to gather information on pay and benefits for various categories of their employees, as well as for comparison institutions ($14.4 million to $24 million). Currently, the CSU has taken an opposed position on this measure. The CSU is opposed to this measure given its costs and substantial changes it would have to the current lay-person board created by the legislature under the CSU’s master plan for education.

Assembly Member Mike Feuer has introduced Assembly Bill 1038 which would create a statutory fee policy without the guarantee that the state will provide general funds necessary to support the CSU and the students. The bill would set student fees at a fixed percentage of the CSU budget, using the fee structure for 2007/08 as an on-going guide. AB 1038 would also not allow student fees to be increased by more than seven percent for any year. Finally, this measure does not contain a statutory commitment by the State to ensure continued funding for the CSU. This measure would have cost the CSU more $500,000 if it had been enacted prior to this most recent budget crisis. Due to the possible costs this measure would have on the system, CSU has an opposed position on the proposal.

Assembly member Anthony Mendoza’s Assembly Bill 1343 would enact the Faculty and College Excellence Act, which express the intent of the Legislature that at least 75 percent of the full-time equivalent faculty of the California State University and the California Community Colleges be tenured or on the tenure-track. The CSU estimated this could cost at least $150 million dollars to implement per the ACR 73 report developed by CSU, the Academic Senate and the CFA. The CSU is currently opposed to this bill.

Lastly, Assembly Bill 1548 by Assembly Member Jose Solorio would prohibit the CSU, the CCC and UC from buying, selling, or allowing the sale of textbooks from publishers who have not posted specified information about textbooks on their websites.

This measure would have a one-time administrative cost to the CSU to implement new requisition processes for textbooks of $50,000 per CSU campus. It also represents a potential revenues loss to the segment in the millions of dollars if faculty chose non-complying textbooks, which students then purchased off-campus. Finally this measure exposes the CSU to significant litigation costs to the segments because of its enforcement clause.