CSUCI Backers Vow to Fight Planned Funding Cut

A recommendation by a state analyst to cut $10 million in funding for a science lab complex at Cal State Channel Islands has angered education proponents, including one senator who vowed to fight the cut “tooth and nail.”

The campus, currently a satellite of Cal State Northridge, is on the site of Camarillo State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill that closed in 1997.

In a report released Wednesday by the legislative analyst’s office, staff members suggested cutting the funding from the state budget because “justification for the project has not been provided.”

They argued that university officials had promised to renovate old buildings on campus and use money other than state funding to pay for the science lab complex.

Not so, said state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) in a written statement objecting to the proposed cut.

“What the analyst overlooks . . . is that it is cost-prohibitive to renovate a building built in the 1930s to create a state-of-the-art modern curricular science program,” O’Connell wrote.

“This is not the first time the analyst has been critical of CSU-Channel Islands,” he wrote. “Quite frankly, I think she is misinformed, and, as in the past, I will fight her tooth and nail.”

Gov. Gray Davis was shocked to hear of the proposed cut but noted that the analyst’s recommendations are not binding, said a staff aide.

“The governor definitely believes this is important funding and should be included in the budget,” Davis spokeswoman Hilary McLean said.

The money is needed for the first phase of the science complex, which would include a small auditorium and six to eight labs--enough space to teach basic sciences to the university’s first crop of students due in fall 2002.

The $10 million was expected to come from Proposition 1A, a $9.2-billion bond issue approved by voters in 1998. The total cost of the complex was estimated at $40 million to $50 million. University officials have said they would seek private donations in addition to public funding to complete the facility.