Governor’s Cut Shouldn’t Put Crimp in Cal State Proposal : County has waited too long for a public university

With one zap of a line-item veto, Gov. Pete Wilson last week put a minor dent in the campaign to bring Ventura County its first four-year state university.

But university organizers say they are unfazed by the blow, and we urge them to press on with renewed vigor.

Wilson was whittling more than 100 items from the long-overdue $68-billion state budget when he trimmed $607,000 that would have helped plan the conversion of the former Camarillo State Hospital into a campus for Cal State Channel Islands. The money, gleaned from construction projects on other Cal State campuses by Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), would have augmented the $1 million requested for design and development.

That $1 million remains in the budget, so while the potential bonus has disappeared, the original allotment is untouched.

We wish Gov. Wilson shared our enthusiasm for Cal State Channel Islands. The students of Ventura County have waited too many years for a facility of this sort. While the county has three community colleges, several private colleges and branches of Cal State Northridge and UC Santa Barbara, too many of our brightest high school graduates feel forced to leave the county to pursue their higher education goals--and too many never return.

In less than a month, Cal State trustees will decide whether or not to endorse a campus in Ventura County. They will be looking for proof that a university on the Camarillo State Hospital grounds can make as much sense financially as it does educationally.

Wilson’s penny-pinching notwithstanding, we say the answer is yes.