Davis Wrong to Punish CSUCI

Ventura County’s 35-year marathon run to create its first state university has hit a ridiculous hurdle: Gov. Gray Davis has put us into a three-legged race with a short-legged partner.

The governor’s preliminary budget for fiscal year 2000-01, unveiled last week, pointedly withholds $10 million needed for our Cal State Channel Islands until Cal State University officials make more progress on development of another campus in Stockton.

Both areas are attempting to turn former state mental hospitals into university campuses; both are required to set up a variety of income-producing ventures that will let them pay much of their own way. Cal State Channel Islands is successfully doing this. It has already signed up private tenants, drawn up a blueprint for development around the campus core and established a nonprofit agency responsible for luring commercial ventures to the 630-acre property. But the campaign to create a Stockton satellite campus of Cal State Stanislaus is lagging behind.

Gov. Davis wants CSU officials to figure out what went wrong with efforts to establish an income stream for the Stockton campus before he frees up money for the next step in Ventura County.

“Here we are doing everything we should be doing and apparently they are not,” Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo, a member of the special authority that serves as landlord and financial manager for the fledgling campus, told The Times. “To be held up because of that is very disquieting.”

The $10 million in question would allow planners to immediately start searching for faculty to create the academic programs necessary to open the campus on schedule in 2002. The governor’s action is quite likely temporary; the $10 million may well reappear before the budget is finalized in May.

CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed has been assured by members of the governor’s staff that the money is being held in reserve for the Camarillo campus and will appear in the budget as soon as concerns at Stockton are worked out.

Already, CSU officials are addressing Davis’ concerns. The university system is studying the development issues at the Stockton campus and figuring out other ways to raise revenue for the center. That study is expected to be completed by April 1, which is plenty of time to show the results to Davis and persuade him to release the money for Channel Islands.

We wish the Stocktonians well. Perhaps they could come down and learn a thing or two from the effective leadership and a colossal communitywide effort that has turbo-charged Ventura County’s effort to turn Camarillo State Hospital into Cal State Channel Islands. But for the governor to penalize Ventura County for its own success is just plain wrong.

Stop holding Cal State Channel Islands hostage, Governor. Our good efforts should not be sabotaged just because of some other area’s sluggishness.