Unclear Budget Deal for UC

You may have seen news articles about a budget deal reached between Gov. Newsom and legislative Democrats. We'll look at the macro side of the deal in a later post. But what about UC's piece of the budget?

In a news release from the governor we find this statement:

UC/CSU Compact Deferral—Defers $524 million from 2025-26 to 2026-27 and from 2026-27 to 2027-28

Full release at https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-Budget-Agreement-.pdf. 

According to LAO's Jason Sisney substack, UC will get its 5% base increase but there will be something subtracted.

Here are some obvious points:

1) The year we are concerned about is 2024-25, which starts July 1. There is no information from the governor about that year.* The Sisney account gives no figure on the cut.

2) Statements about 2025-26, 2026-27 and 2027-28 are essentially meaningless. What happens in those outyears will depend on future legislatures.

3) This is not a "compact deferral." The whole purpose of the compact was to provide predictable multiyear funding with no ad hoc adjustment. Changing the compact on an ad hoc basis, which is what happened, essentially means there is no compact in any meaningful sense of that concept.

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It might be noted that there is language in the news release about cutbacks in the Middle Class Scholarship Program.

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*The trailer bill for higher ed mainly deals with the community colleges including some UC projects with community colleges. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB155/2023.