Community College Trustees Revive Discretionary Fund Plan : Finance: Vote is scheduled on a proposal that would allow each board member to spend money from a $100,000 pool as he or she sees fit.

Fewer than four months after they shelved a controversial plan to give themselves a pool of discretionary funds, trustees of the financially pinched Los Angeles Community College District will reconsider the issue.

A proposal to establish a $100,000-a-year Special Projects Fund, to be divided among the seven trustees to spend on staff, materials, projects or other “district-related needs,” is scheduled for a vote at the board’s meeting today at East Los Angeles College.

If approved, it would represent a significant departure from board spending policies, which require majority consent. Under the special projects plan, each trustee could decide how to spend the money he or she is allocated as long as the expenditure met state law and district regulations.

Advocates say the measure would give trustees a needed avenue to hire their own part-time staff members or to finance projects they believe are important. They say the fund would be operated in a way similar to individual budgets allocated to other elected officials, including the Los Angeles City Council and the county Board of Supervisors.

Critics counter that the money would be used to help further the political careers of the trustees, who serve part time with no budget or staff. They also say that establishing such a fund is inappropriate when the district cannot offer enough classes to meet demand. To avoid further cuts in instructional programs this fiscal year, the district nearly drained its emergency funds and persuaded employees to forgo raises.

Because the current fiscal year is already half-gone, the measure would provide $50,000 from the district’s $362.6-million 1991-92 budget; after that, $100,000 would be set aside annually unless trustees changed or eliminated the fund. Each trustee would get about $14,250 per year.

The board appears nearly evenly divided on the issue.

Trustee David Lopez-Lee, who has long advocated the hiring of part-time staff or “field representatives” for individual board members, said the measure would enable the trustees to have an “independent source of information” about issues they must decide.

“We need a board that is not outgunned by the Administration, (which has) access to all the information . . . how it’s framed, what the nuances are,” said Lopez-Lee, adding that constituents also need to have better service than a part-time trustee alone can provide.

Lopez-Lee, a professor at USC’s School of Public Administration, said graduate students could be hired part time as interns and provide “outstanding work” while gaining practical experience. Trustees who do not want their own staff members could use their part of the funds for district-related materials or projects they feel are important, much as presidents of the nine-college district and its chancellor can do with their discretionary budgets.

But Trustee Lindsay Conner, a strong critic of the proposal that trustees shelved in September, said the current version, while accompanied by the addition of minimal regulations and accountability procedures, “is still a terrible idea.”

“We simply do not have the money for field representatives or trustees’ pet projects when we are turning away thousands of students from overcrowded classes. . . . This money will be used for everything from staff assistants to handing out proclamations and taking college union officials to lunches and dinners--the kinds of expenditures that will benefit the individual trustee at least as much as the district,” Conner said.