UC Regents Make First Lobbying Trip to Capital : Education: Board members, criticized for not doing enough to protect university during four years of budget cuts, will highlight system’s strengths.

In an uncharacteristic lobbying effort to dramatize the importance of higher education in general and the University of California in particular, more than a dozen members of the UC Board of Regents are descending on Sacramento today with a simple message: You get what you pay for.

In back-to-back meetings with legislators and at a morning news conference, the regents plan to highlight the traditional strengths of UC’s educational and research efforts. Assessing the nine-campus system in the wake of four years of budget cuts, they will use words such as “gradual decay” and “erosion of quality.” It may not look like UC is hurting, they will say, but it is--and badly.

“We’re at the bone,” said Regent Meredith J. Khachigian, explaining why she organized what she called the regents’ “united front” today at the state capital. “Sometimes it’s easy to look at how well we’ve managed and say, well, they can handle this. But we can’t any longer. It’s affecting the quality of the university.”

Such a group lobbying effort is hardly unusual in a town that every day swarms with delegations pushing everything from gun control to tort reform. But it is a first for the regents, who in the past have met privately with legislators one-on-one--a largely invisible tactic that has prompted criticism that they are not doing enough to protect UC’s interests.

“To be honest, we are responding to criticism that I think is misguided but is still out there, that regents don’t show up in Sacramento enough. We hear that,” Khachigian said.

This fiscal year, UC requested a 7.9% funding increase, but Gov. Pete Wilson has proposed just a 2% increase. In light of past cuts, UC President Jack W. Peltason has said such a budget will require $23 million in cuts as well as a 10% increase in undergraduate fees. But at the regents’ February meeting, Peltason recommended postponing the fee hike in hopes that the Legislature can be persuaded to appropriate $38 million more to UC this year, for a total increase of more than 4% over last year.

That is where today’s effort comes in. Regents plan to meet in groups of three with 19 Senate and Assembly leaders and state Supt. of Schools Delaine Eastin. Board Chairman Howard H. Leach said that he preferred to look upon the sessions as “two-way communication,” not lobbying.

“ ‘Lobbying’ says you’ve got an agenda that you’ve got to sell. That’s not what this is. This is not, ‘Who do we need to collar to get this?’ ” Leach said. But when asked about the $38 million, he acknowledged, “I’m sure that will come up. Would we like to have the $38 million? You’d better believe it. . . . We don’t intend to be bashful about asking for things.”

Khachigian said that while the logistics have been complicated--to comply with state open meetings laws, no more than five regents on a single committee may gather privately in any one place--she hopes to repeat this exercise every six or eight months. It is the regents’ responsibility, she said, to educate lawmakers about what UC does and what it needs.

“Sometimes issues such as faculty workload or student fees overtake the big picture: offering access while maintaining quality,” she said, ticking off areas where budget cuts have hurt UC. “We’re 10% behind the norm in salaries for our faculty. It’s affecting our ability to hire the people we need--(they) can go elsewhere and get a bigger paycheck.”

Khachigian added: “There’s no use in maintaining access to a lower quality or mediocre institution.”