Senate Scales Back Huge Fee Hikes for Community Colleges : Education: Legislators reject increases proposed by governor. Per-unit costs will still be raised from $6 to $12 for most students.

With nimble legislative footwork and effective lobbying, California’s 107 community colleges seem to have avoided some of the disasters that awaited them in Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed 1992-93 budget.

“We went from a catastrophe to--I’m not sure what to call it-- maybe mild trauma,” said Patrick McCallum, executive director of the Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges and a key player in the budget negotiations.

In mid-August, the governor proposed increasing fees for most community college students from $6 to $20 per unit; charging students who have 90 units up to $112 for each additional unit, and shifting about $335 million from community colleges to elementary and secondary schools.

By the time the Senate approved the budget early Saturday morning, the general fee had been trimmed to $12; the large increase for students with 90 units had been replaced by a less onerous $50-per-unit charge for those who have four-year degrees, and the funds transferred to public schools had been reduced to $227 million.

In addition, the date for charging the new fees was changed from this semester to January and the colleges were assured that they would get their share of Proposition 98 funds again, beginning in 1993-94, after a suspension this year.

No one in the two-year college system considers this a victory.

Officials believe that the new fees will cause systemwide enrollment to drop by tens of thousands. Especially hard hit will be adults with four-year degrees. Laid off during the recession, they returned to community colleges for retraining or upgrading of skills, only to find that a full semester’s work will cost them $750, not $90.

Nor are the colleges happy about paying back a $227-million loan over the next two years, which means $113.5 million will be deducted from their appropriation each year before budget negotiations begin.

But the worst seems to have been avoided because of the efforts of a handful of legislators, staff members and lobbyists in the capital, bolstered by a strong grass-roots lobbying campaign by some community colleges.

“The perception has been that we’re politically weak, that other people can roll over us,” McCallum said. “I think we showed that wasn’t so.”

He said there is a reservoir of goodwill in the Legislature for the two-year colleges, especially since the adoption in recent years of a series of reforms that toughened academic standards, changed the community college funding mechanism and expanded affirmative action programs.

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), whose legislation led to the reforms, and Sen. Alfred E. Alquist (D-San Jose) were helpful in heading off the worst cuts, McCallum said.

Another participant was Sen. Becky Morgan (R-Los Altos). “(I) worked very hard to see that the community colleges didn’t get trampled by” Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig and other school leaders, she said.

Morgan was able to persuade Wilson and his education adviser, Maureen DiMarco, to abandon the high fees for students with 90 units in favor of the $50-per-unit charge for those with four-year degrees.

But Morgan was unable to persuade community college representatives to accept the $20 general fee increase.

“I felt that was reasonable, in light of fees charged in other states, and I also thought it would reduce the amount of the loan the colleges would have to pay back,” she said.

But McCallum and other college lobbyists, in a series of meetings with Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti, persuaded the Van Nuys Democrat to trim the fee to $12, twice what it is now.

“Usually, my role in the education coalition is to be quiet and thoughtful,” McCallum said, “but this time I got emotional. I told him about the damage that would be done to Los Angeles City College and some of the other Los Angeles colleges. I said: ‘David, you’ve got to fight for us--there’s nobody else.’ ”