California is starting to rack up a big budget surplus; billions from Propositions 30 and 39 loom; and Governor Jerry Brown wants to use this good fortune to direct $1.4 billion more to higher education next year, a 13% increase.

The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) thinks the governor’s concern for education is a good thing, but his budget proposals for 2013-14 are not.

The LAO summarized its 40-page report of analysis and criticism, released Monday, with a list of 12 recommendations to the Legislature concerning the governor’s proposals and half of them call for rejection.

First and foremost, the LAO preaches austerity: “We recommend the Legislature allocate any new funding first to meet the state’s highest existing priorities, including debt service, employee pension costs, and paying down community college deferrals.”

Before the governor thinks about freezing tuition for four years and giving 5% base increases to the University of California, California State University and the community colleges, the state needs to reduce debt, rein in pensions and make students pay more.

The LAO recommended that the Legislature reject the tuition freeze and base increases, the latter of which drew criticism for being conveyed by the state with few strings or policy directives attached. It said lawmakers should also reject Brown’s plan to give universities more autonomy in funding debt service.

The LAO said if Brown gets his way, it will not only be a missed opportunity to address systemic problems in higher education, it will be a waste of money because the governor’s proposals are “unlikely to improve [the] system.” The report bemoans what it expects would be “large unallocated increases only vaguely connected to undefined performance expectations.”

The LAO report advocates for greater control over higher education by the state, in general, and the Legislature, more specifically. It calls for lawmakers to reject Brown’s proposal that the universities be allowed to combine their capital and support budgets, not so much because it’s an unnecessary reorganization of a system that works, but because it would transfer control of campus building projects from lawmakers to the schools.

“Most troubling, the Governor’s approach is predicated on the Legislature relinquishing its role in capital decisions for the universities,” the report says. “That is, the Governor takes the Legislature out of the business of approving state buildings at the universities and gives it no role in determining the shares of higher education funding to be used for infrastructure and operations.”

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

California Fiscal Analyst Assails “High cost” of State’s Universities (by Kevin Yamamura, Sacramento Bee)

Report: Higher Education Funding Proposal Too Lax (by Christina Hoag, Associated Press)

Legislative Analyst’s Office Skeptical of Brown’s Plans for Higher Education (by Libby Rainey, The Daily Californian)

The 2013-14 Budget: Analysis of the Higher Education Budget (Legislative Analyst’s Office)