Community College Trustees Seek Fund for Projects

Several trustees of the financially pinched Los Angeles Community College District are pushing for creation of a $100,000 fund that would be divided among the district’s seven board members and spent as each individual sees fit.

While the amount is minuscule compared to the district’s $362.6-million budget, critics of the proposal say the timing is lousy. Trustees earlier this month narrowly averted further class cuts and teacher layoffs only by dipping deeper into a reserve fund so low it already had brought a reprimand from state community college officials.

Further, critics say, the measure, scheduled for a vote at the board’s meeting today, would set a dangerous precedent. Trustees currently have to win approval from a majority of their colleagues before they can spend a dime.

“This is nothing but a slush fund,” Trustee Lindsay Conner said. “Aside from the fact that we can’t afford it, this would let each trustee decide privately how to spend a hunk of taxpayer funds, and I believe that is inappropriate.” But board President Julia Li Wu, one of three trustees who proposed the measure, said she had been assured by another trustee, David Lopez-Lee, “who is very knowledgeable about our financial situation,” that the funds already were earmarked in the board’s budget. She said the funds would enable each trustee to “facilitate our work. . . . They would not be self-serving at all.”

For example, Wu said, a trustee could buy books for a college library, hire a part-time staff member to respond to constituent requests or initiate programs or studies.

The proposal from Wu, Wallace Knox and Patrick Owens calls for each board member to be given a discretionary budget of $14,250. The statement accompanying their motion indicates there would be no fiscal implications because trustees currently have a fund containing $100,000 that can be used for anything the board as a group decides on.

But a district finance official said the trustees are mistaken. Board members set up such a fund about three years ago, which some, including Lopez-Lee, wanted to use to hire part-time field representatives. But they could not muster enough support for the idea, and, as the money gradually was spent on various trustee-approved projects, the fund was not replenished.

“That money is currently not in the budget,” said Larry Serot, budget director for the nine-college district. If trustees were to authorize individual discretionary accounts, they would have to take money already earmarked for something else or dip further into nearly depleted reserves, he said.

Wu said she is aware of some of the controversy surrounding the measure and expects it to be widely debated--and probably amended--before the board votes today. She said she favors changing the proposal so that board members still would be required to get approval from a majority of their colleagues before they could spend their share of the funds.

Leaders of the district’s employee unions and representatives of a districtwide budget advisory committee could not be reached for comment on the proposal.

The proposal comes at a difficult time for the district, which has experienced recent rapid enrollment growth but shrinking state funding.

To cut costs enough to balance the 1991-92 budget without resorting to the big cuts in staffs and classes that had marked the previous year, trustees reduced reserves to $1.1 million, just under half a percent of the district’s $270-million general fund budget.

Last November, the California Community Colleges system sent a letter reprimanding the district for operating with such a small reserve fund--then about $1.5 million--and advised it to get the amount to $12 million. District budget officials said they thought that amount was unnecessarily high but conceded they do not have enough now to handle even relatively small emergencies.

To help keep the district solvent, employee groups agreed to forgo pay raises for at least a year. As other cost-cutting steps, trustees held back part of the money promised to Mission College for expenses related to moving into its new campus. Later this year, trustees will consider scrapping cafeteria service districtwide.