Doom?

Our previous post noted that State Treasurer Lockyer recently said he wouldn’t be surprised if the budget trigger – that gets pulled if sufficient tax revenues don’t appear – would in fact be pulled and would hit UC with another $100 million cut. For your continued enjoyment, here is some more good cheer from the Treasurer:

Lockyer warns that spending cap could spell doom for higher ed

Steven Harmon, Contra Costa Times, 7/14/11

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned that a spending cap that the Legislature qualified for the ballot will do untold harm to colleges and universities if approved by voters next year. The cap, approved last year by the Legislature as part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's last budget, is unusually restrictive and will force a significant downsizing of government, Lockyer said Wednesday in remarks to the Sacramento Press Club.

"I don't see anything fundamentally objectionable" to the idea of spending caps, Lockyer said, "but you'll have unintended mischievous consequences" with the ballot measure, ACA 4, which provides for a 3.8 percent rate of growth for government spending.

The problem, Lockyer said, is that one of the fastest areas of government growth, health care spending, grows as much as three times the rate of inflation. Because no one has been able to figure out how to curb health care costs, the Legislature would have to go after easier targets, such as universities and colleges -- which withstood hundreds of millions in cuts this year alone.

"That's a bad idea," Lockyer said. "It's bad for our future. It's not the right cap. As a long-term investment strategy for the state of California to invest in those public sectors that create jobs, and create good jobs, it's doing exactly what we shouldn't be doing." …

Full article at http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics-government/ci_18471159

Doom can’t be all bad. Depends how you spell it: