Splitting the roll |
Op ed in LA Times:
This year's very public showdown between Gov. Jerry Brown and University of California President Janet Napolitano over raising UC's tuition ended in a compromise that in no way addressed the real issue: Where will the money come from to keep the state's world-class public colleges and universities competitive in the long term? As Napolitano and Brown squabbled over how much the state could afford to pay into UC's coffers, they expressly avoided the real solution to public education's money worries: Reform the commercial side of Proposition 13 so the state can raise more revenue. California could raise $9 billion a year for education and public services if commercial property taxes were reassessed regularly. And note: Such a reform would not affect Proposition 13's protections for homeowners...
Robert J. Birgeneau, a physics professor at UC Berkeley, was chancellor of that campus for nine years.
Full story at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-birgenau-prop-13-reform-20151102-story.html
Gov. Brown - who was governor in 1978 when Prop 13 passed and flipped from being against it to being an enthusiastic supporter after it passed - has shown no interest (quite the opposite) in touching Prop 13 in his current iteration as governor. Back when Prop 13 passed, he was initially able to use a large state reserve in the general fun to bail out local governments. But the bailout's cost plus a recession created a state budget crisis toward the end of his first iteration and Brown was defeated in a run for the U.S. Senate in 1982.
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