Colleges to Recoup Part of Cut Funds

Gov. Gray Davis has restored $32 million--about a third of the amount he vetoed in July--to community colleges’ budget for equipment and repairs.

Colleges say the money won’t go far toward fixing roofs and buying computers on campuses with some of the most neglected facilities.

“I’m still in shock that we didn’t get more money,” said Daniel Castro, president of Los Angeles Trade-Tech College.

Before the veto, the 75-year-old downtown campus was to receive $2 million, the most of any local college, for fire hydrants and a new phone system, among other upgrades.

As much as Davis has been an ally of the colleges, doubling pay-for-performance funding and increasing part-time instructor pay, the economy has been an enemy. While increasing the community college budget overall, Davis, blaming the economy, surprised campus officials by chopping $98 million from their funding, which had been considered invulnerable.

Legislators, unions and educators pressed the governor to spare cuts to two-year colleges, which get a fraction of the funding per student of the state’s universities.

“Given the expected budget shortfall in the next fiscal year,” Davis wrote in a letter accompanying the funding bill he signed Sunday, “if we do not make difficult decisions on expenditures for maintenance and equipment today, we will need to make even more drastic reductions in instructional programs tomorrow.”

The bill recoups a portion of the $98 million in building repairs and library equipment that colleges expected to be in Davis’ budget last summer.

The governor left the division of funds up to state Chancellor Tom Nussbaum, who applauded Davis and said each of the state’s 72 districts will receive some money.

In addition to the $32 million, Davis approved nearly $15 million to pay for preliminary plans for buildings that officials said cannot be built without passage of a proposed multibillion-dollar bond, expected to be on the November 2002 ballot.