He ain't here... (for budget explanations) - Part 2

In our previous analysis of former UCLA CFO Agostini's budget book legacy, we noted that without having Agostini around to answer questions, there are problems of interpretation.* Exactly what was included in revenues and expenditures of the itemized administrative units is not clear. The most we can do (and we will!) is to look at the various micro units he specified to get a sense of what Agostini was worried about before he uttered the Very Bad Words that led to his rapid termination.

(It is also unclear whether Agostini's Very Bad Words were the ones indicating that past financial statements of UCLA were misleading or the words attributing the misleading financial statements to bad management by folks who are still in place in Murphy Hall. But that is another matter.)

Moving on, we now have a new puzzle. The Academic Senate released a report last Friday by the Council on Budget and Planning (CPB) containing a new fiscal picture of UCLA's situation for 2024-05 (last year) and 2025-05 (the current year).** 

In this blog post, we compare the data in the two reports - Agostini's budget book and the CPB analysis - with the major finding being that the two are incompatible. Without Agostini, we can't be sure exactly what revenues and expenditures he included in the totals for the various units he itemized (and which we totaled in our prior post). But CPB analyzed only what are termed "discretionary" revenues and expenditures ("sources" and "uses" in its terminology), apparently a much narrower category than Agostini's. CPB's definition is below:

"Sources reflect discretionary funds including general funds supplemented with indirect cost recovery (ICR) related funds and investment income. Other core funds related to Professional Degree Supplemental Tuition (PDST), Self-Supporting Degree Program Tuition (SSDPT) are not included. Athletics portion here is only fraction of expenses covered by the central budget including a subsidy, debt service, and Big Ten related fees. Source: Based on updated information provided by interim CFO on March 16, 2026."*** 

Below is a table comparing the Agostini and CPB figures:

Note: GF = General Fund

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The main takeaway is that the CPB's numbers are much smaller - because of the limited "discretionary" definition, than Agostini's. We can't directly compare Agostini's definition with those presented in the prior UCLA financial statements that he said were misleading. But in 2022-23, UCLA reported revenues of $11.2 billion and expenditures of $11.7 billion, i.e., numbers much bigger than Agostini's for the following year. So UCLA was using a still more broad definition (including hospital revenues) through 2022-23 in its financial statements.

In a subsequent post, as we previously promised, we will examine what can be learned from Agostini's unit-level data. But it might be useful for the Academic Senate and CPB to examine various categories of revenues and expenditures ranging from the totals that seemed to be the basis of the "misleading" prior financial statements down to what CPB terms as "discretionary." As a practical matter, UCLA would likely feel obligated to deal with situations in which technically independent organizations couldn't cover their liabilities. Athletics is roughly in that category. It isn't supposed to be draining other campus funds, but it nevertheless is. 

Now, you can argue that Athletics is not really an independent organization. But if that example doesn't work for you, consider this one:

From Wikipedia: During the 1980s, the association [ASUCLA] was financially successful. However, by the mid-1990s, ASUCLA had entered a financial crisis in part due to the costs of maintaining its infrastructure including the student union buildings. The Board responded by firing the executive director for financial mismanagement and hiring a turnaround firm. In 1996, due to financial issues and a failed student fee referendum, ASUCLA secured a $20 million loan from the University on the condition it prepare a five-year forecast with its annual budgets and prohibit presidents of the undergraduate students association and the graduate students association from serving on the board; the loan specified that a failure to do so would entitle the UCLA Chancellor to appoint additional representatives of the campus administration to the Board and eliminate the student-majority. The Board also responded to the mid-90's financial crisis by delegating additional responsibilities to the association's professional staff.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Students_of_the_University_of_California,_Los_Angeles.

The fact is that if, say, the parking folks, or the hospitality folks, or the hospitals, or whatever organization got into financial trouble, some kind of bailout would likely be arranged by UCLA. And if UCLA couldn't do it, systemwide UC and the Regents would intervene.

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2026/03/he-aint-here-for-budget-explanations.html. 

**We have added the CPB report to our UCLA budget document collection on the Internet Archive at:

https://dn720904.ca.archive.org/0/items/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Council%20on%20Planning%20and%20Budget%20%20Updated%20Report_%20Analysis%20of%20UCLA%20Campus%20Structural%20Deficit%203-20-2026.pdf.

The full set of documents in the Archive is at:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026.

***It's not clear why supplementary tuition is excluded. The professional programs that have such tuition are presumably able to spend it as they like. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 289

From the Orlando Sentinel: A bill allowing professors and staff at Florida’s universities and colleges to train as “guardians” and carry guns on campus was approved by the Legislature on Thursday as an effort to increase safety. The bill (HB 757) expands the K-12 guardian program created after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 that left 17 people dead. Republican lawmakers pushed its expansion to the state’s postsecondary institutions after the shooting at Florida State University last April that left two dead.

The House approved the final bill 88-20 on Thursday, just one day after the Senate passed the measure. It will now head to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has already signaled his support. His December budget proposal included $6 million to implement the program at the state’s 12 universities and 28 colleges. The program would be optional for schools, and the college or university president would appoint the guardian. Guardians would need hours of firearms training before they could carry guns on their campuses...

Full story at https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/03/12/florida-approves-guardian-program-expansion-for-colleges-universities/.

UC-Berkeley Settles Antisemitism Lawsuit

From the LA Times: UC Berkeley on Thursday said it would revise campus nondiscrimination policies, prohibit student organization bylaws from banning Zionist speakers and pay $1 million in legal fees to settle a lawsuit by two Jewish groups over alleged antisemitic incidents following protests in response to the Hamas-Israel war in 2023. In addition, UC Berkeley said it would revamp an online nondiscrimination page to clarify that it considers an antisemitism definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance when evaluating discrimination complaints...

UC Berkeley has considered the IHRA definition since 2024, based on Department of Education guidelines. What is new is that the campus has agreed to refer to the definition on its Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination web page. The settlement is the latest among UC campuses that have closed out lawsuits and civil rights complaints stemming from contentious pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests that reached a crescendo in 2024 with pro-Palestinian encampments at all nine undergraduate campuses and a violent attack against pro-Palestinian activists at UCLA in April of that year... In a statement, UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said the settlement built upon work already underway...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-19/uc-berkeley-settles-brandeis-center-antisemitism-lawsuit.

Note: The Daily Cal attributes the decision to settle to the Regents in a closed-door session last Wednesday. While such a sequence is reasonable to assume, since the session was closed-door, it is unclear how that information could be known with certainty. See:

https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/uc-berkeley-settles-with-brandeis-center-over-allegations-of-antisemitism/article_2915c2a5-6163-445d-9407-ba2a8b8d9dfa.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 288

From Inside Higher Ed: Utah representative Mike Petersen was inspired to introduce new legislation after receiving a call from his daughter, a master’s student in social work in Louisiana. She was disturbed that a professor had asked the class to write to a local lawmaker in favor of LGBTQ rights. “She … said, ‘Dad, I just got told I needed to write a letter to my legislator advocating for some policies that don’t align with me,’” Peterson said. She didn’t raise her concerns to the instructor “because she was afraid.”

Petersen has since sponsored a bill, passed by the Utah Legislature this month, that would allow students in the state to opt out of some coursework that conflicts with their religious beliefs. The legislation now awaits the governor’s signature. The bill creates a process by which students at Utah public colleges and universities could request to skip upcoming assignments for a mandatory class or major requirement that go against a “sincerely held religious or conscience belief.” For example, a student could ask in advance to opt out of watching a sexually explicit film required on a course syllabus. A professor who denies a student’s request would have to explain the decision to a “neutral arbiter” assigned by the university, according to the bill. That person would assess whether nixing the assignment—or subbing in an alternative—counts as a “fundamental alteration” to the class’s learning objectives.

The bill also states that professors can’t “compel a student to publicly take or communicate a specified position,” such as requiring them to write a letter to a lawmaker or publish an article espousing a particular viewpoint. The bill leaves it to the Utah Higher Education Board to come up with more specific guidance on how these policies should be applied and requires the board to report back to the Legislature on how implementation goes...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/state-policy/2026/03/16/utah-could-allow-conscientious-objection-class-assignments.

Traffic Squeeze in Sepulveda Pass This Weekend

From Santa Monica Patch: Traffic will be impacted on the 405 Freeway and nearby roads this weekend when construction will shut down several lanes on both sides of the interstate near the Sepulveda Pass. The freeway will be reduced to three lanes in each direction in the area of the Getty Center and Mulholland Drive from 10 p.m. Friday, March 20 through 5 a.m. Monday, March 23. Additionally, two ramps will be closed. The planned closures are as follows:

Northbound 405 Freeway

The interstate will be reduced to three lanes between a point just south of the Getty Center Drive/Sepulveda Boulevard off-ramp and a point just north of Bel Air Crest Road. The Getty Center Drive on- and off-ramps will be closed.

Southbound 405 Freeway

Reduced to three lanes between the Skirball Center Drive/Mulholland Drive on-ramp and the Getty Center Drive/Sepulveda Boulevard on-ramp...

Full story at https://patch.com/california/santamonica/s/k53rg/mini-carmageddon-what-to-know-about-the-weekend-long-405-closure-beginning-friday.

Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 133 (New DOJ Lawsuit)

From US Dept. of Justice Press Release: ...The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division [has] filed a lawsuit against Harvard University for race and national origin discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

After Hamas’ attacks on October 7, 2023, Harvard has tolerated antisemitic mobs of students, faculty, and visitors allegedly expressing their opposition to Israel by assaulting, harassing, and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students with perceived racial, ethnic, and national connections to Israel. Harvard has been deliberately indifferent to its Jewish and Israeli students’ plight and failed to prevent such conduct by selectively enforcing its campus rules to permit it to continue. Harvard ignored what its own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias deemed the “exclusion of Israeli or Zionist students from social spaces and extracurricular activities.” Harvard failed to meaningfully discipline the mobs that occupied its buildings and terrorized its Jewish and Israeli students. Federal law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in schools that accept federal funding...

Harvard is currently set to receive more than $2.6 billion of taxpayer money under active grants from the Department of Health and Human Services, to say nothing of other federal agencies. The United States’ complaint seeks to compel Harvard to comply with Title VI, and to recover the taxpayer funds that Harvard accepted while in violation of Title VI...

Full release at https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-harvard-university-antisemitism.

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Note: Actual lawsuit is at https://ia600402.us.archive.org/9/items/2-final-hjaa-report.-the-soil-beneath-the-encampments/Harvard%20Complaint%20US_v_Harvard_-_Title_VI_antisemitism%203-20-2026.pdf.

He ain't here... (for budget explanations)

There was a classic radio show in the 1940s and early 1950s called Duffy's Tavern. (It subsequently transitioned to TV.) The thing about Duffy's Tavern was that Duffy, the bar's owner, was never there. The show began with "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" as a theme song. A phone would ring and Archie The Manager would answer:

"Hello, Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Archie the manager speakin'. Duffy ain't here—oh, hello, Duffy."

Archie would then tell Duffy, who wasn't there, about the day's events, which would form the story of the program. But we would never hear from Duffy. Of course, it was the fictional Duffy who created the place where the various stories would unfold. But he wasn't there to participate.*

We have been posting from time to time about UCLA's budget information. Former CFO Agostini said a Very Bad Thing to the Daily Bruin about how UCLA's prior financial statements were misleading due to bad management, words that got him canned. But as blog readers will know, he did leave us with a budget book legacy containing macro data for 2023-24 and unit-level data for that year plus 2024-25 and forecast data for 2025-26, the current fiscal year. Like Duffy, however, Agostini ain't here to explain and clarify what is in the budget book.

The budget book contains data on revenues and expenditures for 41 identified "units." Apart from numbers for revenues and expenditures with some detail, there are charts for each unit showing whether revenues exceeded or fell short of expenses. The units are not totaled in the book. That omission of a total may be because there were purportedly no data for one unit: "Basic Biomedical Sciences." (There is a blank page for that unit which, given its name, presumably receives significant research grant revenues.) Unit detail goes down to the school, but not the department. Presumably, one could in theory go down to the department level, but the book is what it is, and Agostini, like Duffy, ain't here to explain why it isn't more detailed. He also ain't here to explain some of the definitions of subcategories of revenues and expenditures.

A different problem is that the budget book came out as a pdf document, not an Excel sheet. But the wonders of AI allows us ("us" actually being my son - who knows how to use an AI program) to create an Excel sheet from the pdf. And from that, we can explore the data. 

Former CFO Agostini was keen to tell the Academic Senate there was a major budget problem at UCLA requiring cuts in spending. But it was all expressed in general statements, not detailed accounts. The resulting pressure to produce actual numbers seemed to be the impetus for the budget book. So let's start with a macro look at the unit level data. Note that unlike the figures we have previously been looking at on this blog from other sources, the 41 units are basically academic components and exclude, for example, hospital revenues. And they also exclude the one missing unit.

As the chart above shows, expenditures for each of the three years significantly exceeded revenues,** at least by Agostini's figures. The chart below shows the deficits for the three years:

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Two deficits are shown. The smaller ones on the chart isolate the campus General Fund (GF). The larger bars show the overall funds (including the GF) but also from revenues and expenditures outside the GF. 

The overall deficits shown are large: about $374 million the first year, $703 million the second, and $290 during the current year. Presumably, the reduction in the deficit this year compared with last reflects budget cuts that were made.

Note, however, that missing from the Agostini budget book are data on reserves. More than a billion dollars had to be drawn down from somewhere to cover the deficits for the last three years. Where did that billion come from? How much reserves are there in the kitty to cover deficits that might arise in the future? If I were on any Academic Senate committees tasked with budgetary oversight, I would ask for reserve data along with figures on revenues and expenditures. 

Keep in mind the caveat we keep making. At the micro unit level, revenues attributed to any one unit are often a matter of somebody's discretion regarding allocation, especially of FTE. Thus, whether a particular unit shows a surplus or a deficit is also often a matter of discretion.

In future posts, we will look further at unit-level data. The fact that Agostini ain't here will be a complication in interpretation. But it (the inability to get clarification) is what it is.***

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*Recordings of the program are at https://archive.org/details/DuffysTavern.

**I have subtracted withdrawals from unit reserves from the reported revenues. Depleting reserves is not revenue. (As blog readers will know from our past analyses of state budgets, it is common in state and local finance circles to confuse depleting reserves with revenue.) The depletion of unit reserves, however, was not a major factor at the macro level. 

***The Excel spreadsheet from which the charts were derived can be downloaded at:

https://archive.org/download/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026/UCLA%20Agostini%20Budget%20Book%20AI%20Combined%20-%20Original.xlsx. It is part of the Internet Archive page where we have stored UCLA's past budget documents in case they disappear:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-budget-book-v-final-feb-2026.