Almost five hundred legislative measures have been introduced since the 2009-10 legislative session began last December. A good number of these measures deal with the State’s fiscal crisis and were introduced in special sessions; however, the California State University (CSU) Office of Advocacy and Institutional Relations have identified the following measures of interests to date.

AB 24 (Block) California State University: Feasibility Study: Chula Vista: Would require the Trustees of the CSU by January 1, 2011, to conduct a study about the feasibility of a CSU satellite program, and ultimately, an independent CSU campus, at Chula Vista.

AB 37 (Furutani) Public Postsecondary Education: Honorary Degrees: Would require the CSU and the Community Colleges, and request the University of California, to confer an honorary degree upon each person who was required to drop-out of college due to their forced internment during World War II.

AB 53 (Portantino) State Employment - Salary Freeze: This measure would prohibit any state employee, including employees of the CSU, who earns more than $150,000 to receive a salary increase, overtime pay, or a bonus until January 1, 2012. The measure does exclude Constitutional officers, employees covered by a memorandum of understanding (unions), employees under the oversight of a federal receiver (corrections), and any person who has been exempted by executive order of the Governor. Mr. Portantino has an almost identical measure in the Assembly second extraordinary session as well, ABX2 1.

AB 69 (Duvall) Statewide Student Fee Policy: Last year, Assembly Member Mike Duvall introduced AB 2722, which would have required the CSU and requested the University of California to establish a mandatory systemwide fee for undergraduate students that would remain unchanged for four years in an attempt to give students a greater ability to budget for their costs of attending these systems. That measure, which the CSU opposed, only received two votes in the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee.

ACA 7 (Hernandez) Public Education: Assembly Member Ed Hernandez introduced legislation that would reverse part of Proposition 209, which amended California’s Constitution to prohibit the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. ACA 7 would delete Public Schools, the CSU and the University of California, from the scope of this constitutional prohibition.

HR 4 (Portantino) Relative to Federal Aid to Higher Education: This resolution requests the federal government to create a federal program for higher education in the amount of seventy billion dollars with the goal of establishing college-going grants similar to the World War II era G.I. Bill of Rights, and student loan debt forgiveness for all students who take jobs in public service.

SB 19 (Simitian) Education data: Would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation creating the Statewide Education Data Governing Board, with the purpose of linking education data from disparate education and non-education sources.

SB 48 (Alquist) College Textbooks: Affordability and Online Textbooks: This measure expresses the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation addressing the affordability of college textbooks and the promotion and use of online textbooks.

All of these measures are eligible to be heard in committees as of today, except for SB 48, which is eligible after February 12th. Most of these measures will not be taken up immediately as the bills haven’t even been assigned to a policy committee. And once referred to a policy committee, it likely will be held up by the committee until they reach a point that they have collected enough bills to merit having a hearing, possibly by the end of February or early March.

The CSU has yet to take a position on any of these measures pending further analysis. Additionally, many of these measures are placeholders, or “spot” bills that need to be amended before the CSU can take a position.