Wow!  What a convoluted bit of reading.  Proposition 92 attempts to fix a problem with California's community college system when it doesn't apppear to be broken.   The agenda of the proposition is make college more accessible to all Californians by lowering cost to students.  This, when it has the lowest tuition fees in the country and yet this proposition seeks to lower and essentially fix them at $15/unit.  The mechanism to ever raise the fees is rare in requiring a growth in per capita income of 6.7% which happened once in the past twenty years according to the Legislative Analyst.  The proposition simultaneously mandates more General Fund monies and reduces community college fees to the hefty estimated annual price tag of $370 million to us ($300 million and $70 million, respectively). 

To us.   The proponents claim Proposition 92 doesn't raise taxes by saying it lowers tuition fees.  True enough, however someone's going to get stuck with the check eventually, no doubt us.  The opponents rightly claim taxes will be raised to cover the annual $370 million shortfall or cutting some other "critical programs."  What constitutes a "critical program" would be an interesting discussion when we have a community college system that offers classes in golf, cooking, and probably some other "critical" education needs, all for the current whopping sum of $20/unit.  Again, what's broke here???  For a state already in the middle of a fiscal emergency with a $14 billion deficit (Indian casinos to the rescue will be (R)nold's next TV ad!!).  Now I'm all for everyone getting the education they need, but the current personal cost of $600 a year is hardly a hardship especially when a student from a family of 4 with an annual income of $65k qualifies for a fee waiver.  That's $50 dollars a month for a gross income of $5,400 a month.  No tuition costs at that income is pretty generous.

The measure also will codify the community college into the state constitution and increase the Board of Governers from 16 voting members to 19 (why?).  The extra members will of course require support staff to to perform all the new administrative functions and the measure gives the board full control over its administrative expenses theoretically to "free" it from politics by increasing the power of the current bureaucracy.  Even our mighty Govinator would be effectively neutered from doing much of anything to control this board. 

The one logical thing I see in here is tying the flow of K-14 funding to enrollment figures.  K-12 enrollment is projected to drop over the next two years and then begin to climb again while college enrollment will generally increase with some flucuation here and there.  The measure would calculate funding levels based on enrollments.  Okay.

Oh, now they're trying to make me feel like Scrooge.  I just read the rebuttal to the argument against the proposition.  Get out your hankies as it's written by three community college students.  No analysis of the opponent's arguments, just don't make us pay more to go the JC.  I can almost hear Marie Barone screeching "How COULD you!?!!?" trying to get her pathetically wimpy son Raymond to cower in submission.  That ticks me off.  Give a valid reason to support this measure rather than tug at my heartstrings and wallet.  I'm putting two students through state universities with no help from the guv-mint thank you very much to the extent their nearly $3,000/semester for tutition/books/etc. isn't subsidized by the state.

Do as you will on this ballot measure.  I was a fence sitter at first, but not anymore.