Community College Budget Cut OKd

Forced by the state’s worsening financial picture to gear up for across-the-board belt tightening, the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees on Wednesday unanimously approved a tentative budget that is $30.5 million less than its current spending package.

The $359.5-million proposed budget, adopted on a 7-0 vote, is a 7.8% drop from this year’s spending and it would freeze employee salaries again. It also calls for cuts averaging 5.1% in the operating budgets of the district’s nine colleges and a 12.8% reduction in district administration spending.

However, district officials said the tentative 1992-93 budget does not yet include added revenue for student financial aid and federally funded special programs. It also reflects a worst-case scenario for the district in light of the state’s financial situation, district spokesman Fausto Capobianco said.

This year the state provided more than 54% of the 120,000-student district’s revenues. In January, Gov. Pete Wilson proposed increasing the amount of state aid allocated to two-year colleges, but a projected deficit in the state’s budget might lead to deep cuts in education spending.

District trustees are not required to approve a final spending package until September. That gives local officials time to make adjustments once the governor and Legislature have resolved the state’s budget issues.

“As is customary for this stage of budget development, appropriations reflect early stages of college planning and significant changes are expected before completion of the final budget,” Chancellor Donald G. Phelps wrote in submitting the tentative spending package to trustees.

Although general operating revenues are expected to be about the same as this year, rising costs make the tentative budget voted on Wednesday about $10 million “short of the amount needed to support the current level of services,” Phelps said.

Anticipated cuts in campus operating budgets range from 0.1% for Valley College to 9.6% for City College. The bigger cuts reflect the fact that some colleges got one-time boosts in their budgets this year, officials said.

In the past, colleges have trimmed their budgets largely by reducing the number of classes offered, especially in the evening programs, which have a greater proportion of part-time instructors who can be cut back or laid off more easily than their tenured colleagues.

Last year, employee unions approved contracts in which they agreed to forgo raises in years when the state does not provide an adequate cost-of-living increase to the district. The tentative budget under discussion Wednesday assumed Sacramento would provide no such increase in the coming fiscal year.