Politics & Government

Huff Fields Questions, Hears Testimony on Budget Cuts

Sen. Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) attended a town hall for students at Mt. San Antonio College and a Senate Budget Committee hearing Friday at Cal Poly Pomona.

State Sen. Bob Huff spent late Friday morning hearing concerns from college students about how California’s budget struggles were affecting their ability to afford an education.

Huff (R-Diamond Bar) followed that up with an appearance at an on-the-road Senate Budget Committee Hearing at Cal Poly Pomona in the afternoon, where representatives from Inland school districts, law enforcement agencies, county governments and universities shared which of their programs would likely go away with more funding cuts.

Neither event provided a particularly rosy picture of the state’s economic outlook. 

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Citrus College is facing a $2.8 million cut to its local budget resulting in a loss of 664 FTES, equaling approximately 221 sections.

Other students at the town hall voiced objection to the tuition increase in Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget plan that raises fees to $36 a unit from $26, making the point that with the cost of living in California and the high price of textbooks, they were barely getting by as is.

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Huff, who also represents Walnut and Glendora, said $36 per unit is still the cheapest.

“When you look at it with the rest of the country, it is still the best bargain in the nation,” he said, adding that students should be able to get fees back in their federal tax refunds.

He also said he supports a cap in the number of units to root out “professional students,” a measure attendees at the town hall said would especially hurt those who have trouble getting the already limited classes because they don’t have priority registration.

Even greater fee hikes and deeper cuts to personnel could be the order of the day if state lawmakers can’t find a way to make up a whittled down $13.6 billion shortfall, according to some state lawmakers.

That was the message given at the Senate Budget Committee hearing at Cal Poly, where legislators heard testimony from three panels representing government agencies, school districts, and universities, mostly from San Bernardino and Riverside counties. 

The Senate Budget Committee was the only one in Southern California this fiscal year. Besides Huff, the committee’s vice chair, Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, whose district splits Cal Poly with Huff, attended.  Also there were senators Bill Emmerson, (R-Hemet), Joe Simitian, (D-Palo Alto), Michael Rubio, (D-Bakersfield), and Alan Lowenthal, (D-Long Beach).

Sen. Mark Leno, (D-San Francisco), chaired the hearing, giving an overview of the state’s original $26.6 billion shortfall.  The Legislature has made $14 billion in cuts so far and must now bridge the remaining $13.6 billion gap, he said.

“We are like every state in the country in that we are experiencing the effects of an international economic crisis,” Leno said.  (Because of the) greed and recklessness of Wall Street bankers, we are all here picking up the pieces.”

The state is at its lowest level of revenues since the early 1970s, Leno said.  The governor has called for the extension of some existing taxes, to be approved by voters, to help fill the remaining $13 billion hole.  State Republican lawmakers have resisted the extensions, instead calling for regulatory and pension reforms.

Huff said during the hearing that the focus for solving the state’s budget woes needs to be on “out of pace public pensions.”  He quoted a study called the Stanford Report that lists the state’s pension program as $500 billion over budget.  Leno said that the student study Huff named has been roundly discounted as inaccurate.

Leno ran through a list of potential cuts the Legislative Analyst’s Office suggested should the current vehicle license fee and other taxes not be extended beyond their June 30th expiration date. He said the list of cuts were just what could happen and nothing definite.

The Legislative Analyst Office is a non-partisan entity that provides the governor with budget suggestions.  The LAO has recommended $2.6 billion in additional cuts to courts and criminal justice, which could result in the closing of two prisons, the elimination of state funding for local law enforcement, and the closing of courts one day a week. 

With the tax extensions, Prop.98 funding for K-12 education would remain steady at $49.3 billion, Leno said. Without them, the LAO suggests funding be reduced to $44.5 billion, equating to 51,000 teacher layoffs statewide, increased class sizes, and a shortened school year, he said.

Brown’s proposed budget calls for $400 million in cuts to community colleges and $500 million in reduced funding for the UC and CSU systems.  Without the tax extensions, the LAO suggests $847 million in additional cuts to the universities and $685 million more for the community colleges, he said.

Huff previously has called talk of such cuts “scare tactics.”

The day before the hearing, Huff and Emmerson issued a joint statement, calling the meeting a “’budget road show’ designed to scare Californians into believing that if they don’t support increased taxes they will adopt an all-cuts budget that devastates schools and public safety.” 


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