Urban Impact Program Would Be Revised : Robinson Bill on School Aid Advances

The budget-writing Ways and Means subcommittee on education Tuesday approved a bill by Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) to expand the $65-million Urban Impact Aid program for California school districts.

But the panel kept alive a rival measure by Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress).

The two Orange County lawmakers--both trying to extend special funding to school districts where population shifts have increased the number of poor families since legislators first enacted the program in 1977--had been pushing two different bills through legislative channels.

Before Tuesday’s subcommittee hearing, neither Allen nor Robinson had shown any interest in compromising. But Assemblyman Robert Campbell (D-Richmond), subcommittee chairman, said it would “be sort of ludicrous” to approve both bills, as two legislative panels have already this year.

Campbell said Allen’s bill was kept alive “in case the Robinson bill gets bombed somewhere along the line.”

Although the state Department of Finance and the office of the legislative analyst both endorsed Allen’s approach to funding reform, the Democrat-controlled subcommittee instead passed a modified version of Robinson’s.

Appropriation Increased

By increasing the appropriation for the program by $6.4 million, Robinson’s bill would provide new or additional funding to 12 school districts, including Santa Ana and Garden Grove, without taking money away from districts already funded under the program.

But Allen had proposed that the complex formula for doling out urban impact money be revised and updated. Under her approach, 11 school districts, including several in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, would lose money.

Allen said she feels her approach is better because it provides for an equitable distribution of funds and periodic reallocations.

But Robinson said he wrote his bill to “hold harmless” districts already getting money, because poverty has not disappeared in the state’s major urban areas and “in all candor, they are not areas without significant political representation.”

He added, however, that he would allow an amendment later to provide for periodic reallocations.

Currently, Urban Impact Aid money is allocated under the formula devised in 1977, which uses population and income data that, for some factors, is 10 years old.