CHAPARRAL

Roots of Unity
by Mike Allen, Guild President

Forget What The Campus Wants!

     There have been some disturbing actions lately in the halls of power at GCC, with some administrators first claiming disingenuously that they had no idea a large amount of unallocated revenues would be coming our way in February (on the so-called P1 report), and then making plans to grab that money for what they think it should be spent on, rather than following the approved Final Budget plan passed by the Board three months ago.  What's more, they don't feel the need to defend their proposals through the normal governance/budget development process, but instead have decided to go directly to the Board of Trustees first.

     As background, recall that the development of the District’s 2006-07 budget began early this calendar year with a call for new funding requests from every college program.  After an intensive process of analysis, dialogue, and difficult decisions by both standing governance committees and the Expanded Budget Committee, a Final Budget was presented for a public hearing on August 21, and was subsequently approved by the Board on August 28.

     This Final Budget provided funding for approximately 55 “Must Do” or “High Priority” requests (as rated through the process), and these are on top of the usual list of exempt cost increases that we have no choice but to budget for.  In addition, this Final Budget took stronger steps than ever before to make certain that it will hit the target reserve level of 5 percent in its June, 2007 ending balance.

     The Final Budget noted that certain revenues were not yet known with a high degree of certainty, and that more would be known once the college received its First Principal Apportionment (P1) report.  The only outstanding expenditures pending were the final cost of negotiations with the college’s two bargaining units, potential overruns in the area of health care premia, and the possibility of funding more of the ranked requests from the budget development process.

     Our college budget process does allow some flexibility for late requests in the case of an emergency, or if there has been a significant change in the information environment.  A good example this year was the discovery almost immediately after the Final Budget was printed that the large amount of Basic Skills funding we received could be used only to augment (rather than supplant) funds already budgeted for our Basic Skills programs.

     But this is not the case with any of the ideas proposed to leapfrog the approved list of pending items.  Apparently many of these ideas derive from a panic concerning our upcoming midterm report to the college’s accrediting body.  One example cited as "requiring" funding is the refilling of positions lost during the last budget crisis.  However, the recommendations from the accreditation merely suggest that the college establish what its planning priorities are for hiring new employees and restoring lost positions.  In fact, most of the accreditation recommendations are of this type—asking for better processes of planning (and by implication, less administrative freewheeling).

     Despite the fact that the college offers well-equipped classrooms, numerous computing environments, and a state-of-the-art voice/data network, another "need" some think we have is to change the way we pay for campus technology.  Once again, however, the accreditation report only recommends long-range planning for how we budget for technology and learning resources, but is silent on the question of what type of funds should be put towards these ends.

     The accreditation report also suggests that an actuarial study should be performed to quantify the outstanding liability of the District’s post-retirement benefits.  Standard 45 of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) likewise states that this should be accomplished by 2008.  However, we completed such a study very recently and are thus in full compliance, two years ahead of time.  While the study did quantify the “unfunded liability” we have in this area, we have carried such a liability for decades without quantifying it and without the slightest problem.

      There are many difficult questions that would have to be answered if the college were to consider going further and locking up money in an irrevocable trust as an attempt at reducing this number.  For example, in their most recent Sacramento Report, the District’s state lobbyist Patrick McCallum Group states that they expect to see legislation soon to help public entities figure out how to deal with these obligations.  Questions about the uncertain legislative environment alone renders premature making moves in this area of the type that has apparently been envisioned.

     But even if they weren’t premature, there is still the fact that none of these proposed expenditures is among the list of pending budget actions that the Board approved in its Final Budget for 2006-07.  Nor have any of them gone through the governance process.  And, as mentioned before, none of them is an emergency or the product of changed information:  the administration has long known that significant amounts of unallocated revenue would become available when the P1 report is released in February, 2007, and were reminded of that fact at the public hearing on the Final Budget.

     Thus, the appropriate place for all of them to go is into budget development for 2007-08, a process which will start during winter session.  As for this year, it is our belief that most of the available funds should be put into the negotiation process with CSEA and the Guild, which is the first item on the Final Budget’s approved list of pending budget actions.  Currently, only the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) funds from Sacramento have been put towards that purpose—nothing else.  After taking a pay cut during the recent bad years, we have a legitimate expectation of far more than COLA in a good year like this one.

     For a long time we have heard the mantra “Yes, we recognize that GCC is a far better than average community college, in large part due to its having a far better than average group of employees—the type who go the extra mile.  We would love to pay you better, but our funding rate per FTES is just so much lower than that of the Los Angeles district.”  But 2006-07 is the year in which our funding rate has finally been equalized to LA’s.  It is time to correct historic salary inequities and prove that the mantra was not merely lip service. &

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