Who Is More Frugal?
Governor Jerry Brown will be releasing his state general fund budget proposal next week. He has carefully cultivated his image as a frugal fiscal disciplinarian. And he has been taking UC to task for asking for more money from the state, demanding more cuts first.
At the November 19, 2014 Regents’ meeting he said he was going to deliberately underfund UC to force the Regents to make big changes “because it is so hard to work change in complex institutions, often time the pressure of not having enough money can force creativity that otherwise can’t even be considered. I know the State, when we had a $27 billion deficit; we had to make changes, and not just cuts, but changes in the way that we do business.”
But who has been the real miser over the years?
In his first post-Schwarzenegger budget, Brown reversed Governor Schwarzenegger’s tripling of the Governor’s office budget. The Governor’s office’s budget was $7.8 million in Governor Davis’s last budget in inflation adjusted dollars (before Schwarzenegger boosted it to $23 million in his first year), and Governor Brown spent $8.4 million on that office in his first budget.
Brown also slashed UC’s budget drastically (by 25%) in his first budget, but, unlike the budget for the Governor’s office, Schwarzenegger had also slashed UC (Schwarzenegger’s final UC budget was 16% lower, in inflation adjusted terms, than Davis’s final budget for UC).
But what is more interesting is what has happened in Brown’s budgets since then. At a time of recovery from the drastic recession era cuts, Brown has increased the budget for his office by 35%. At the same time, state support for UC increased by the very slightly lower 34%. Accounting for Brown’s commitment to funding student aid, UC and the Student Aid Commission together only increased by 23%, two-thirds as much as the increase for Brown’s own office.
The long-term reality is even more striking. Since fiscal 2000-01, the state’s general fund has been held flat when adjusted for inflation, even as the state’s population grew 12%. Meanwhile, governors have cut state funding to UC by over 30% while increasing funding for the Governor’s office 40%. Since 2001-02 the number of students at UC climbed 36%. Using the state’s population as a crude measure of the Governor’s workload, UC’s inflation and workload adjusted state funding has been cut in half while the Governor’s office’s budget has grown by one quarter.
| Year | State general fund money to UC per FTE-student, in 2014 dollars | State general fund money for the Governor’s Office per 10k state population in 2014 dollars |
| 1992-93 | $ 19,138 | $ 3,626 |
| 1993-94 | $ 18,024 | $ 2,484 |
| 1994-95 | $ 17,966 | $ 2,409 |
| 1995-96 | $ 18,190 | $ 2,318 |
| 1996-97 | $ 18,612 | $ 2,237 |
| 1997-98 | $ 18,932 | $ 2,195 |
| 1998-99 | $ 21,075 | $ 2,357 |
| 1999-00 | $ 19,767 | $ 2,216 |
| 2000-01 | $ 24,017 | $ 2,224 |
| 2001-02 | $ 23,486 | $ 2,135 |
| 2002-03 | $ 20,762 | $ 2,199 |
| 2003-04 | $ 17,918 | $ 2,194 |
| 2004-05 | $ 16,268 | $ 6,237 |
| 2005-06 | $ 16,513 | $ 6,030 |
| 2006-07 | $ 16,860 | $ 5,981 |
| 2007-08 | $ 16,900 | $ 6,087 |
| 2008-09 | $ 11,770 | $ 4,290 |
| 2009-10 | $ 12,335 | $ 3,746 |
| 2010-11 | $ 13,479 | $ 3,512 |
| 2011-12 | $ 10,106 | $ 2,211 |
| 2012-13 | $ 10,268 | $ 2,761 |
| 2013-14 | $ 11,896 | $ 2,804 |
| 2014-15 | $ 12,190 | $ 2,771 |
| Full period of data availability | 54% | 76% |
| since 2000-01 | 51% | 125% |
| Brown era | 121% | 125% |