[ITT-staff] FW: ACCCA's Legislative Update - April 17, 2015

[Adams, Joshua]

FYI

From: communications at accca.org [mailto:communications at accca.org]
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2015 15:50
To: Adams, Joshua
Subject: ACCCA's Legislative Update - April 17, 2015


[http://www.accca.org/images/Logos/ACCCA-leg-update-logo.jpg]

To view the Legislative Bills Report, click here<http://www.accca.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3669>.

April 17, 2015

State Budget Update

On Tax Day, the Administration confirmed the unanticipated personal income tax (PIT) revenues in March as estimated by the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) last week. In addition to the $571 million of extra PIT income, the Finance Bulletin also noted additional corporation tax revenues of $81 million and sales and use tax receipts of $15 million above forecast, for a monthly grand total of $6.604 billion, or $652 million above the 2015-16 Governor’s State Budget forecast. This brings year-to-date revenues through March to $1.286 billion above the forecast of $71.962 billion.

In April, the Governor’s Budget estimates a total of $12.2 billion in personal income tax will be collected. The LAO and SCO are each tracking income tax receipts online, with results over the next week key for making the revenue target. The LAO notes, “While it is far too early to ‘call’ the trends for the month . . . as of yesterday afternoon (April 14), growth trends for the PIT seem to be greater than the Administration’s projected trends for the entire month.” These revenues will directly affect Governor Brown’s May Revision proposal. Stay tuned!

2015-16 Growth Formula Update

At the direction of the 2014-15 State Budget, the Chancellor’s Office has been convening a working group to create a new growth formula for the California Community Colleges. After receiving feedback from community college stakeholders on the unveiling of the first formula, the working group has drafted a revised formula, which has received support from legislative stakeholders and the Administration.

The growth formula, which will be formally unveiled by the Chancellor’s Office in the coming days, uses the legislatively prescribed factors of adults without college attainment, unemployed adults, and households below the poverty line to measure “need” in a district. Compared to the current level of access for a district, this “unmet need” will account for just more than 50% of a district’s targeted growth rate. The formula also looks at the district’s growth or decline over the past two years to make sure calculated growth aligns with a district’s realistic ability to grow. Under the Governor’s proposal of 2% growth system-wide, the result is district growth opportunity levels ranging from a minimum of 1% to as much as 5.24%.

The Chancellor’s Office and its working group have done a commendable job bringing all interested parties together to move forward in this significant effort. The new growth formula takes effect on July 1, 2015.

Legislative Update

The Assembly Higher Education Committee took the week off, and the Senate Education Committee did not focus on any significant community college related bills. Next week, Assembly Bill 963 (Bonilla, D-Concord) will be heard in the Assembly Public Employees, Retirement, and Social Security Committee with numerous K-14 organizations and districts providing their support to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System eligibility solution.

For the second week in a row, garnering the most attention is Senate Bill (SB) 277 (Pan, D-Sacramento), which would remove the ability for parents to file a personal belief exemption from the requirement that children receive vaccines for specific communicable diseases prior to being admitted to school. Following a lengthy hearing of the bill in the Senate Health Committee last week, SB 277 was the focus of public testimony and member discussion for nearly four hours in the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, April 15. Committee watchers estimated more than 400 people testified in opposition to SB 277.

Following public testimony, senators discussed the need for the bill when statewide immunization rates are at acceptable levels and whether home-schooled students or parents with religious beliefs should be exempted. Coauthors of the bill, Senator Richard Pan and Senator Ben Allen, were unable to provide the answers to convince the committee members to vote in favor of their bill. Seeing the writing on the wall, Senator Pan accepted Chair Carol Liu’s suggestion not to take a vote of the Committee, which seemed poised to vote the bill down.

SB 277 will be back before the Senate Education Committee for a vote-only hearing next week, so no further public testimony will be taken. If the bill is ultimately approved by the Senate Education Committee, it still has another policy committee hearing to go—the bill has been triple referred to health, education, and judiciary committees.
Click here<http://www.sscal.com/accca.cfm?a=5624&p=24987&action=week_view&contentID=20181> to read this weeks news articles.
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