There's only so much juice in a lemon

We will get to reporting on the Regents and what they heard about the state budget last week as time permits. Rest assured that we have - as always - preserved the recordings indefinitely. (And we have already reported on the first day and a half.)

The key issue in some sense is what happens to the non-higher ed and non-UC parts of the budget. The biggest chunk is controlled by Prop 98 as amended for K-14. In the governor's May Revise, the Prop 98 world accounts for over 40% of the total general fund. And that includes a diddling with the details of Prop 98.

Suffice it to say that the influential California Teachers Association is opposing the diddling and is pushing for "more."*

There are other parts of the budget that are not mandated by formula but are subject to constraints. At the end of the day, the judicial system produces a certain number of state prisoners. Squeeze too hard on that piece of the budget and there will be federal court decisions requiring minimum expenditures on constitutional grounds.

What all is said and done, the legislature sees UC as one of more vulnerable parts of the state budget. The Regents can raise tuition if state allocations are squeezed. The prisons can't. And the nice part, politically, is that the Regents get the blame. No one wants to say that. Yours truly just did.

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*https://apnews.com/article/california-budget-deficit-schools-newsom-teachers-union-e8de3476bfdec82f916b54223d9bf061.