We're still looking for numbers and definitions - Part 2

As blog readers will know, we have agitated for up-to-date budgets from Murphy Hall. It is still the case that if you go to UCLA's official webpage for budgets as of today:

https://www.finance.ucla.edu/corporate-accounting/ucla-annual-financial-reports

you won't find anything beyond fiscal year 2024-2025.

However, Murphy Hall did provide a Zoom session on October 29th for the Senate. Unfortunately, yours truly could not attend. Another faculty member did provide notes and screenshots. It would be very helpful if the Senate provided a recording of the event. (Many faculty cannot attend live Zoom sessions during business hours due to classes or other activities and obligations.)

Below is a screenshot of two tables:

Here are some abbreviations used on the tables:

DTS = Digital & Technology Solutions

GL = General Ledger (a financial record at UC that contains every transaction and account used by an organization, in this case UCLA)

TRIP = Total Return Investment Pool (short-term investments held at UC - in this case by UCLA - that provide liquidity)

BGP = Blue and Gold Pool/Blue and Gold Endowment Pool (longer-term investments funds held at UC - in this case by UCLA - that earn higher returns than TRIP, but whose value at any point in time fluctuates more, i.e., more risk taken for higher returns)

And below are two charts related to the "General Fund," a term typically applied to an account for day-to-day receipts and expenditures:

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Note: "TE14 allocations" appear to refer to transfers of fund into or out of accounts such as research grants. Source:

https://www.ucop.edu/ucop-budget/_files/AM101%20Training%20Nov.pdf (p. 29)

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The first thing to note is that if you go back to 2024-25 in the link provided at the top, you will find that UCLA's overall expenditures (and revenues) were about $12.5 Billion. So even if we assume no growth to 2025-26, the total is around 10 times as large as what is shown on the charts. The revenues and expenditures on the tables above are around $2 billion, still a lot less than $12.5 billion. Thus, it appears that the business operations of UCLA Health (and possibly/probably other UCLA business units) are carved out of the tables and charts above.

You might also note that standard bookkeeping typically involves two kinds of basic information (flows, i.e., revenues coming in and spending going out) during a standard period (usually 12 months) and a statement of stocks (assets and liabilities) at a moment of time (usually the beginning and end of the 12-month period). Possibly, a statement of assets and liabilities was provided during the Zoom event, but - if so - yours truly doesn't have it.

Note first that the language used on the tables appears to mix up stocks and flows. The table on the right talks about "deficits" (a flow concept referring to spending flows exceeding revenue flows) when what is being referred to is a debt, a stock concept. The table on the left talks about an "operating balance" which seems to be the difference between revenue flowing in and spending flowing out. But balance is really a stock term. The difference between revenue and spending in everyday English is either a deficit (spending > revenue) or a surplus (revenue > surplus). 

Note second that when flow deficits occur (spending > revenue), the money to cover the difference has to come from somewhere. And that "somewhere" is either drawing down past reserves (assets) or running up debt (borrowing, liabilities). So an important element in understanding how significant a (flow) deficit to the financial condition of an organization is the organization's capacity to deal with that deficit. If, for example, the organization has very large reserves on hand and the deficit is small relative to those reserves, there is no emergency. If there is a reverse situation, there is an emergency.

When in the classic film Citizen Kane, newspaper owner Kane is told by his accountant Thatcher that he is losing money and should do something about it, the following dialog occurs:

"You're right, Mr. Thatcher, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... sixty years." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzhb3U2cONs

Apparently, the powers-that-be at UCLA do not think of their financial situation as anything like Kane's. But absent some clear accounting of what reserves UCLA has, how much leeway the university has to deal with its deficits is hard to assess.

So what do we learn from the table on the left? Apart from the business side of UCLA health and perhaps other business units, last year (2025-2026) UCLA ran a deficit of $95 million. An oddity of the table when it comes for the projection for this year (2026-2027) is that after calculating a deficit of $203 million, two added lines tell us that the table left out another $100 million ($36 million + $66 million, lines 21 and 22) of projected DTS spending. So the total deficit is thus $303 million. 

That amount seems like a lot, but we don't have - or at least yours truly doesn't have - information on assets or reserves that can be drawn upon. The table on the right seems to be some kind of total of liabilities. It gives a total of about $1.3 billion of debt. I can't make head or tail of the TRIP/BGP number of $740 million on line 24. But note that more than half of UCLA's debt on that table is on that line! Is that line saying that UCLA overdrew its bank account with UC to the tune of $740 million? 

Then there is the matter of athletics. It seems - mainly from ongoing news accounts - that UCLA has forgiven significant past debts of athletics (accumulated annual deficits). But that just shuffles the liabilities that arose to somewhere else. Apparently, there was something at the Zoom event about a $250 million long-term bond to deal with past athletic debt.

Finally, former CFO Agostini - before he said Very Bad Words and was fired - created a budget book that broke down the macro totals into sub-units of the university. There apparently was no analog to that format at the Zoom event.