Time for Sac State to look forward, not back

Sacramento Bee 5/6/07

That primal scream you heard came from Sacramento State University.

Budget shortfalls and proposed permanent cuts to the academic program recently led to a 77 percent to 23 percent faculty vote of no confidence in the leadership of President Alexander Gonzalez. Gonzalez has made adjustments in response. Now it's time for all parties to take a deep breath and move on. Going forward, the faculty and the public will have a more open, transparent budget process -- with better understanding of the university budget all around.

The calls for Gonzalez to resign are misplaced. Since his arrival in July 2003, Gonzalez has provided fresh leadership after the 19-year presidency of Donald Gerth. The faculty strongly backs his Vision 2010 plan. Surely, faculty and administration can work through deficit problems in pursuit of that future.

Sac State's budget issues are a microcosm of those facing the entire California State University system. While the governor's 2004 compact with the University of California and CSU systems ended several consecutive years of base budget cuts and prevented further erosion with inflation increases, it did not restore funding to previous levels. New revenues to the system now come primarily from enrollment growth. Essentially, a campus must increase enrollment or it won't get extra dollars. This funding squeeze also has come as health benefit costs have skyrocketed.

(Of course, there's an 800-pound gorilla in the room. Prison spending is sucking the life out of higher education. From 1984 to 2004, state general fund spending per capita on prisons increased 126 percent, while spending per capita on higher education declined 12 percent.)

In this budget climate, Gonzalez hoped that Sac State could grow out of its problems with enrollment increases. But after three years of not meeting enrollment targets, he had to change that view. He proposed to invest new dollars in student recruiting and fundraising.

The frustration of the faculty also is understandable. They learned only in September, well into the fiscal year, that the size of Sac State's deficit had grown from $2 million to $6.5 million. Where past deficits had been covered with one-time budget cuts, this new deficit was too large for that. Gonzalez proposed to phase in permanent cuts to the base budget -- primarily to academics, which is 76 percent of the budget -- even as he proposed unspecified increases in administrative jobs.

The positive outcome is that Gonzalez has created a new University Budget Committee, which will review expenditures, make budget recommendations and prepare an annual budget report. The president will continue to make final decisions. The university's Budget Task Force concluded in March that "much of the miscommunication and misunderstanding of the state of the university's budget situation might have been avoided if the university were accustomed to regular and thorough reporting of the university budget."

Faculty and administration need to get beyond the recent miscommunication and misunderstanding to make common cause on budget issues. If state universities want to reverse their declining share of the budget relative to prisons, they will have to be more open about budgets and show that they are spending money wisely.