Campus Funding Delay Urged

State budget analysts are recommending that funding for the conversion of Camarillo State Hospital into a university be delayed pending further study, including a look at whether it would be more cost-effective to build the campus from scratch.

The recommendation, made Wednesday by the legislative analyst’s office, comes after a review of Gov. Pete Wilson’s upcoming budget, which earmarked $16.5 million to transform the hospital into Ventura County’s first four-year public university.

The Legislature’s fiscal analysts want to put the funding on hold for a year to review long-term costs and benefits of the conversion.

However, legislators and university officials said Wednesday that they are confident that they will be able to safeguard the money and that the project will move forward without delay.

“Their recommendation is short-sighted, misguided, irrational and wrong,” said state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), who has long fought to establish a public university in Ventura County.

O’Connell is chairman of the Senate’s education subcommittee, where the analysts will make their pitch to slash the money from the budget. “I’ve already told them that they were wrong and I told them that they would not be listened to,” he said. “I think this will fall, with all due respect, on deaf ears.”

But state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), who also sits on the subcommittee, said analysts have raised good questions, expressing some of the same concerns that she has had about the project.

Ending a 30-year wait, the 24-member Cal State governing board agreed in September to take control of the shuttered mental hospital and convert it into the new home of Cal State Northridge’s Ventura campus.

Under that plan, the satellite campus will remain an extension of the Northridge university until it attracts enough students and funding to support itself and become the university system’s 23rd campus, to be called Cal State Channel Islands.

The proposal received its biggest boost last month when Wilson unveiled his fiscal year 1998-99 spending package that included $16.5 million to operate the university and turn a number of the hospital’s Spanish-style buildings into classrooms and administrative offices.

In its annual review of the governor’s spending plan, the legislative analyst zeroed in on the conversion money. Specifically, they want to cut $11.3 million set aside for renovation and capital construction, and $5.2 million for technology, maintenance and other support services.

They were most concerned about the increased costs of operating the off-campus center at the old hospital site, noting that the Cal State system would have to pick up the tab for maintaining the entire facility while only using a portion of it.