CSU student fees meeting delayed

By Juliet Williams
The Associated Press

The California State University Board of Trustees has canceled a late-October meeting where it was to consider boosting student fees by as much as 10 percent for the next school year.

The Oct. 26 monthly meeting would have been held less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 general election. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides has been critical of fee increases at California universities and community colleges under Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The governor froze fees for the current school year.

State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, sent a letter Thursday to board Chairwoman Roberta Achtenberg requesting an explanation for the cancellation.

“Specifically, I would like to know why the Board of Trustees canceled this long-planned meeting until after the November gubernatorial election,” wrote Nunez, a voting member of the board.

The October meeting is when trustees typically decide the budget for the following school year and had been scheduled since May 2005.

The CSU budget instead will be discussed during the next regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 14 and 15, said Paul Browning, spokesman for the CSU chancellor’s office.

Achtenberg did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment.

In his letter, Nunez said that for the last eight years — as far back as the publicly posted board minutes extend — “the Trustees’ practice has been to hold a public meeting to make decisions on its budget proposal in late October in order to present the CSU budget to the state Department of Finance by November 1.

“It does not appear that ever in that time period has the meeting been canceled.”

Nunez’s office provided a copy of the letter to The Associated Press.

The governor is president of the 25-member board and appoints a majority of its members.

Current board members include William Hauck, president of the California Business Roundtable and a Schwarzenegger supporter, and Kyriakos Tsakopoulos, son of a major Democratic political donor and former Angelides business partner.

Angelides has made an issue of college fee increases during the gubernatorial campaign.

Under Schwarzenegger, fees at the 23-campus CSU and the 10-campus University of California systems rose 14 percent in 2004-05, 8 percent in 2005-06 and were frozen this year, according to Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign.

California Community College fees rose 44 percent in 2004-05 and remained at that level last year, but dropped 23 percent this school year.

The CSU calls its charges to students’ fees, rather than tuition. Undergraduate students taking a full course load now pay $2,520 per year in fees.

The Schwarzenegger campaign has said many of the fee and tuition increases at California colleges during the last five years can be attributed to former Gov. Gray Davis, the Democrat who was ousted during the 2003 gubernatorial recall election and replaced by Schwarzenegger.

In his letter, Nunez questioned the timing of the meeting’s cancellation.

“The people of California deserve to have all the issues put in front of them in advance of an election,” Nunez wrote. “A significant increase in student fees at the CSU is certainly an issue of public policy that ought to be put before voters in advance of the election.”

The speaker asked Achtenberg to clarify whether the decision to postpone the meeting was made in open or closed session. He also wants to know who made the suggestion and why.

The governor’s office said its spokeswoman on education issues was not immediately available to comment.

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