A nonpartisan report warns that a cuts-only state budget could increase university tuition 10 percent.

Some 162 people, many in wheelchairs, spoke out against the proposed $750 million in cuts to disability services at an Assembly budget committee hearing last week. Some wore breathing apparatuses and couldn’t speak – or make the trek to the state capitol to testify for one minute – without aid from a family member or caregiver.


“One witness said, ‘Why do we have to come to Sacramento every year to justify our existence? It’s a direct assault on our dignity of human beings,’” says Monterey Assemblyman Bill Monning, who, along with the rest of the Assembly Budget Committee Dems voted to approve a modified version of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed state budget late Friday, Feb. 18.


This week, a joint legislative committee with members from both houses meets to reconcile the Assembly and the Senate’s spending plan. To help fix the $26.6 billion budget hole, Brown and Democrats propose cutting $12.5 billion in social programs and asking voters to extend tax increases on income, state and vehicle-licensing fees, set to expire in July. Brown wants lawmakers to approve the budget by March 10 so voters can decide in June whether to extend higher taxes for five years. But top Republican lawmakers have vowed not to put the tax extension vote on the ballot and have told Democrats to draft an all-cuts budget.


“The bigger political challenge comes in early March,” Monning says. “We need a two-thirds vote for the revenue pieces of the budget, so we need to find those Republicans in both houses that will not support raising taxes, but giving voters a chance to say yes or no to existing taxes.”


Sen. Sam Blakeslee, a Central Coast Republican, would not say whether he would support putting the tax extension on the ballot. His spokeswoman, Erin Shaw, says Blakeslee is talking with the administration to develop an alternative that can earn bipartisan support. “As a principal involved in the negotations, Sen. Blakeslee has been careful not to make any pledges or precommit his votes but is instead talking with a wide range of local stakeholders.”


A recent report by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says that closing the deficit without taxes could mean cutting $4.6 billion from K-12 public education, which may mean larger class sizes and a shorter school year by three to six weeks. It could also mean a steep hike in university tuition – a 7 to 10 percent increase.


Monning calls the potential cuts to education funding “draconian,” and says, “If we look to students to balance the cost of higher education in the face of these cuts, we move further from the promise of higher education being free and accessible to all qualified students to more of an apartheid system of segregated access based on the ability to pay.”


Meanwhile, CSU-Monterey Bay officials say they’re taking a proactive approach to possible budget cuts or tuition hikes, and looking for ways to save – and make – money, such as increasing student retention efforts and continuing the hiring freeze. Additionally, during the summer the university rents its facilities to groups for camps and conferences. In 2010, it received $650,000 in revenue. “We’re hoping to do more of that in the future,” says spokesman Scott Faust, adding that enrollment is up, which brings more tuition money to the campus, and that CSUMB hopes to increase enrollment again next fall.


Still, he adds, “While tax extensions may not be everyone’s preferred way of keeping things going, they are much preferable to the alternative: deeper cuts to higher education that we would definitely feel here at CSUMB.”