The May Revise this week has little good news for the CSU system. The CSU did get some added funding in the area of expanding Nursing programs by adding $3.6 million to the CSU budget. The May revise did not fund the 1% compensation request by the Chancellor’s Office that the CSUEU and other unions support to fund our contracts. The amount needed to provide an additional 1% compensation for CSU employees is $27.6 million.

We need to mobilize our members to email, call and visit legislators with the simple message to fund the 1% compensation request for the CSU budget. Tell legislators that competitive salaries are needed in the CSU in order to recruit and retain a trained and dedicated workforce. It is also important to remind the legislature that the CSU budget was cut by over $500 million from 2002-2005. The CSU has not yet recovered from those deep cuts since the funding has never been restored.

There are some important links that we have compiled that will help give some background on the budget process and budget impacts we all must consider.

The Assembly speaker’s response indicates that there will be a battle over some of the proposed cuts in funding:
http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a46/press/20070514AD46PR01.htm

The Overall Budget Process is best represented in the following Link from the CSU website:
http://calstate.edu/BudgetCentral/8-step.shtml

The Legislative Analysts Office (LAO) offers some caution with the Governor’s May revise.
http://lao.ca.gov/2007/may_revise/may_revise_051507.aspx

The complete text of the Governor’s May Revise can be viewed at the Department of Finance site:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/

The California Budget Project has reviewed the May Revise and offers its perspective on its impact on California:

http://cbp.org/pdfs/2007/0705_mayrevise.pdf