Democrats Decry Gov.’s Deal-Making

SACRAMENTO —  Many Democrats in the Legislature -- frustrated by a popular Republican governor making budget deals all around them -- are saying enough is enough.

Tuesday it was universities.

Today it will be cities and counties.

Within the next few weeks, it is likely to be a deal to get more revenue from Indian casinos.

With little attention to the Democrat-controlled Legislature that must approve the final product, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is moving swiftly to reach budget agreements that may help him deliver on a big promise: a new state budget without new taxes.

Unwilling to endorse agreements negotiated in secret, Democrats abandoned their silence Tuesday and said they were not buying it -- at least for the moment.

“It seems the governor chooses his partners where he sees fit and otherwise excludes us,” said Assemblyman Marco Firebaugh (D-Los Angeles). “This was all done in the dark of night in some back room someplace. We reject that.”

State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) was blunt: “The governor is trying to make the Legislature meaningless.”

On Tuesday, the heads of the University of California and California State University systems stood with the governor and announced that they would accept hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts and fee hikes this year in exchange for guarantees of modest funding increases in the future.

After the announcement, Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton) declared, “We will not support any of these draconian recommendations.”

Schwarzenegger, however, called his maneuvering to close the state’s projected $14-billion shortfall “extremely advantageous for our state.”

“Always someone will be able to look at it and say, ‘Well, there’s one thing I don’t like about this, there is something else I don’t like about that,’ but they are all great deals,” he said.

The university leaders defended their deal with the governor.

UC President Robert C. Dynes said the agreement would “stop the bleeding,” allowing the university to stabilize year-to-year funding and letting students’ families plan for predictable fee increases, rather than drastic, one-year hikes.

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed said the deal would “provide a foundation for us to plan off.”

Political analysts say it will be hard for Democrats to ultimately do anything but go along with it, now that leaders of the institutions they are fighting for are on board.

Today, in the Sacramento suburb of Elk Grove, the governor will announce his deal with local governments -- also made without any input from the Legislature. It involves cities and counties agreeing to a $1.3-billion cut in each of the next two years in exchange for Schwarzenegger’s support of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing that their share of state revenues will never again be cut.

The governor denies that all the deal-making is designed to cut lawmakers out of the budget process.

“No one is excluded from the process,” he said. “You have to understand, the legislators are my partners. We have had great success up until now working together, and we will have great success in the future.”

But when it comes to the higher education deal in particular, many Democrats say they don’t feel like partners at all.

One part of the deal with university officials -- the proposed fee increases -- could take effect without lawmakers having much in the way of input. Governing boards of both university systems are expected to vote on them next week.

Under terms of the agreement the governor announced Tuesday, undergraduates in both the UC and Cal State systems would pay 14% more for the fall, followed by increases of 8% for each of the next two years.

If the deal is approved by the university’s regents, UC undergraduates who are California residents will pay an average of $5,684 in mandatory systemwide fees for the academic year beginning in the fall, as well as fees set by each campus. In-state undergraduate fees at Cal State would rise to $2,334 under the plan, not including campus fees.

The agreement calls for graduate student fees to go up 20% at UC this fall and 25% at Cal State, although the latter’s teacher credential candidates would pay slightly less -- 20% more than this year. Cal State trains the majority of California’s teachers.

Graduate fees at both institutions would then rise about 10% for each of the next two years.

Other specifics of the deal include:

* Funding for 2.5% annual enrollment growth -- 5,000 more students per year for UC and 8,000 for Cal State -- through 2010-11. The funding deal would allow both institutions to return to their plans for enrollment growth through the decade, although it would leave intact a 10% cut in freshman enrollment for each for the current year.

* An annual state funding increase of 3% for both UC and Cal State, growing to 4% in 2007-08. This money would pay for salary increases, among other things.

* Continued, but unspecified, state support for UC’s 10th campus, UC Merced, which is under construction.

* Agreement by UC to use “nonstate resources,” including private funding, to provide $12 million for academic outreach programs for disadvantaged students, with state funding for the programs to be determined in each year’s budget process. Outreach funding for 2004-05, which was all but eliminated in the governor’s budget proposal, is expected to be partly restored in his revised budget this week.

Some faculty and student groups announced that they planned to join lawmakers in fighting the agreement.

“I am extremely disappointed,” said John Travis, president of the California Faculty Assn. and a political science professor at Humboldt State.

“The chancellor doesn’t speak for the whole CSU.”

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Times staff writers Peter Nicholas and Stuart Silverstein contributed to this report.