Angelides Denounces School Cuts

State Treasurer Phil Angelides on Tuesday attacked the governor’s proposed budget cuts to higher education as potentially devastating to California’s high-tech, education-dependent economy.

Launching a two-day tour of six of the state’s colleges and universities, Angelides was apparently continuing an effort to position himself as a potential Democratic rival to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Angelides attacked Schwarzenegger’s recent proposals to cut $700 million from state funding for higher education.

“I believe deeply that it would be short-sighted and just wrong-headed to slash into the fabric of these universities and colleges because they are a key driver of our economy,” Angelides said at UCLA, the first stop on a tour that will take him from San Diego to Chico.

“Higher education is a crown jewel in this state and we have to view it as an investment.”

The governor’s proposed reductions, along with suggested student fee hikes and enrollment cuts at the University of California and California State University, would, if enacted, represent the “most dramatic weakening of our commitment to the university and college system since the 1960s,” Angelides said.

Schwarzenegger administration officials disputed the characterization, noting that the governor proposed cuts across the landscape of state government, in health care, transportation and K-12 education, as well as colleges and universities.

“Every aspect of state government is being asked to shoulder some of the savings required,” said H. D. Palmer, Department of Finance spokesman. “In higher education, the governor wanted to make sure those were done without affecting the core instructional missions of the institutions.”

In his Jan. 9 budget, Schwarzenegger proposed reducing freshman enrollment at UC and Cal State by 10%, raising student fees -- most sharply for graduate students -- and cutting financial aid. He also proposed reducing spending on university research and faculty.

Angelides, who has been Schwarzenegger’s most outspoken Democratic critic thus far, said that rather than cut higher education, Schwarzenegger and legislators should consider raising taxes on high-income families or closing what the treasurer described as financial loopholes for corporations.

“This budget is about choices and it seems to me we have other choices than to slash the universities,” he said.

At UCLA, Angelides met with faculty members, administrators and graduate students working at an 18-month-old center that develops technology to enable scientists to monitor the physical world in ways previously impossible.

The center’s first projects include developing sophisticated sensor systems to help detect and monitor soil and marine contamination as well as the ways earthquakes affect buildings.

Deborah Estrin, the center’s director, said technology developed there would reap many times its value in coming years, helping companies save money and ultimately, she predicted, creating thousands of jobs. The program is funded by $4 million annually from the National Science Foundation, she said, but that federal money is contingent on a 30% match from the state.

Later Tuesday, Angelides toured an outreach program at San Diego City College and a research center for grape cultivation and winemaking at Fresno State University. Today’s tour will take him, among other stops, to a teacher training center at Cal State Sacramento.