Assembly Budget Subcommittee No 3 Education Finance

Good morning everyone. Good morning and welcome to our subcommittee number three on Education Finance for the Assembly Budget Committee. Thank you all for being here. I am Chair Alvarez and we welcome you to our hearing today. At today's hearing, we will be focusing on the UC issues that we previewed a little bit with the visit from the President of the university, Mr. Milliken, and so want to thank UC for being here to follow up on several of the issues that we raised then and that have become important to the assembly in the last few weeks. So we have a few panels on the agenda. We will get started with panel number one. If we can ask the UC Core Operations Funding Proposals panel to please come forward. I just want to preface this as they come forward to the table that this is the last year of Governor Newsom's compact with the uc. So I think it's important for us to reflect on how we will support the system on a going forward basis. This includes thinking about how we continue to encourage in state enrollment, which has been a key component of the legislature and the assembly for sure in the last several years, and how our funding decisions will support the work of more Californians attending our UC system. We will also discuss Title 9 basic needs funding. As we have seen students have needs that go beyond the educational needs and in order for their success to be effectuated, there are other needs that need to be met, whether it's housing, basic

nutrition and others. We also want to hear about the common course numbering, which has been something that has been in the works for some time and we're hopeful that there is some progress on that. And obviously enrollment, which is an issue that is a priority for us as we have seen UC's enrollment grow, making sure that California students are a part of that growth. And obviously we cannot avoid the conversation of the potential federal impacts that have already occurred that are being threatened to California. Not just California, but to other colleges and universities, whether they're Hispanic serving institutions or otherwise, as some UCs are. We know that there are impacts from recent research funding that is being threatened by the Trump administration. So I think it's important that we get an understanding of that long term picture for uc. So I see that our first panel is settled, so I want to welcome you and we will get started with the Department of Finance. Welcome.

Thank you. The Legislative Analyst Office welcome Good morning

Thank you very much. I will have UC now.

Thank you all three of you. Appreciate that. Let's turn it to committee member comments and questions. We will start with Mr. Fung.

Yes. Alex and I with the Department of Finance I can provide some context. The 61 million reflects two different proposals technically in one as part of the 2025 Budget Act. The Budget act proposed to delay 31 million one time as part of the fiscal year 2025 26. However for that year it provided the ongoing funding for the subsequent years. Now the 2026-27 governor's budget is proposing the final augmentation of that program or that support for the replacement of non residents which is an additional 30 million. Which gets you to that roughly 61 million ongoing for a total based funding of 153 million for the replacement of non residents.

Certainly. Thank you for the question. Assemblymember Fong, the impacts on students if we don't receive the deferred funds would be that the student services that are currently being funded by the loan would then have to be cut because while we're getting a loan to repay the original loan, the funds would no longer go to the campuses. So those one time services would have to be cut. At the moment we would also have to start scaling back on ongoing Expenditures which means that some of the services that we have started during the last several years to try to promote student success would have to be scaled back. Some of the especially expensive ones that require a lot of staff time, time such as the summer start and certain duplicative services potentially on campuses. UC Davis is looking at closing down computer labs that are at the moment open 24 hours a day where lower income students can print their documents. Those would go away. There would have to be cuts that are no longer just focused on administration because the current cuts have been very heavily on scaling back to UCOP assessment was scaled back by 10% this year. We have cut travel on our campuses and we did a hiring freeze that led to about 1600 positions being not filled across our campuses. Those would have to be continued and they would ultimately start impacting the services that students receive. We are not able to cut back on our faculty because of their tenured status.

That is correct. We receive many more applications than we

That is correct. LA UCLA is at this point the most selective university in all of the United States.

You're asking me to add to the reserves discussion?

Oh, the 3% loan. Yes. So in the current year, 3% of our base budget funding was deferred and we took out a loan to cover those costs. The governor's budget offers us another loan to repay the state treasury for that loan, which would carry the loan forward for us, but then we wouldn't necessarily have the cash to. We would have a loan obligation for the books as well, which would have to be repaid at some future time. The campuses have developed structural deficits across the UC system. So we have across our system almost $300 million in structural deficits for our campuses. And if we do not receive additional funding, we would have to find that amount of cuts in this coming fiscal year.

Chair. Thank you. Let me ask a couple questions that are more technical and then I'll get into my commentary because I have some for today. On UC's revenue chart or bar graph, I should say we see the three components. General fund, which the legislature appropriates, student tuition fees, and then UC general funds. I'm interested in what the UC general funds. What are the sources of revenue? And not all of them. Cause I'm sure it's a long list. What are some of the. Maybe the top three sources of revenue there.

Sorry, I heard you say 1 million.

Okay, thank you. Our medical schools revenue is that held in a different account. And none of that gets used for any of the UCs that that is

Okay, how much of. Well, we'll talk about it and get to number three. You mentioned that the UCOP assessment which the UC Office of the President charges to you to the campuses, the best way to describe it is like a franchise fee. If you have a campus you gotta pay to the UC Office of the President. It was cut by 10%. What is the total UCOP assessment that's generated?

So then if it was cut 10%, it was cut roughly about $25 million.

If you find a different figure, just let me know. But I think we're going to assume that's roughly the ballpark.

Okay, so you had said 237, but it's 296.

Million. Okay, so probably about a 30 million. Is. Was. Was it reduced 30 million from the prior year? From 2425 or what was the 2425 number?

Okay, but the 2526 number is 296 million.

That's the assessment to the campuses.

What is the total UC Office of the President budget?

Okay, thank you, Appreciate that. Let me ask you Department of Finance and I think I know what the answer is going to be because that's typically what happens at these hearings. The recommended LAO comments on in our agenda on the reduction of base increase. Is there any response to that at the moment?

This is governor proposes 351 million is on page seven of our agenda. Yeah.

Okay, even. And to the lao. Your comment here is that even without the base increase, the core funding would grow already by 3.5%.

Okay, there was a comment made and I totally appreciate it from UC about any potential reductions. This is where my commentary from my colleagues comes in. Would. Would be reductions on ongoing expenditures. I want to start to channel to this committee as we start to talk to all of the segments and all of the different programs of the budget. It is my belief, having spent a lot of time reviewing our budget, that we are in a much more delicate situation long term than I think perhaps we may be acknowledging as California and perhaps even as a body. And so when we hear phrases like this would require ongoing expenditure reductions, I would ask that we all think about that and try to think about what are the least harmful of those because what I see long term, the LAO said, it's not coming from me, but is the out years. We will have some very difficult decisions to make given the projections all around. Even the governor's budget talks about a massive budget structural deficit which if we continue at status quo, we're talking about cuts to everyone. And so if at some point, and I fear that we likely will be getting to the some point we have to talk about cuts, it is going to be a very, very much not fun conversation to be having in this committee. Certainly as a chair who you know, we've, we've, we've rallied together to fund education at all levels to the extent possible. But I want us to start thinking a little bit more delicately about what do reductions, what can, what might reductions look like. So I'm hoping, and I should have said this before, that as you ask questions, whether it's in these hearings or on in other other briefings that you receive, that we start to ask questions about specific programs and where we think the harm can be furthest away from the people we want to serve, which in this case is students. And so a lot of my questions will be focused on that. I hope that you can help me and help us as an assembly figure out what those things can be because again, I think I'm not fearful but likely that in the next couple of years we're going to be talking about some very difficult decisions and I'd rather be making less difficult decisions now than more difficult decisions later as I hope to continue to serve in this body and in this role. So I ask for all of your help in the and some of these questions are in that spirit on the issue of the reduction of that the LAO is proposing removing the out year commitments for 2728. So we're not even talking about this year's budget but to the deficit question finance is projecting. Are you in agreement that the projected budget identifies 241 million in one time back payments in 2728 and another 144 million in 2829, which means this legislature would have to identify almost $400 million of revenue to pay for these commitments in not the budget year, but in future years. Is that what's being asked of us?

The governor's budget proposes a variety of deferrals. Some include out your payments and some of those are reflected in 202728 and 2028 29, as some of the compacts are on an ongoing basis.

Well, we might come to this when we turn to issue two, when we discuss enrollment. I think one recommendation might be to consider the number of students they enroll and make sure that we maintain a level enrollment that's sustainable based on the, the support that the state can provide.

that, and thank you to you, Chair Alvarez, and this committee for all of your support. I know you all believe in higher education very much. We think that it's very uncertain that the next governor would want to fulfill any funding commitments made by the current governor. So we cannot assume that those funds would be coming to us later. So we will have to start preparing. If we do not get those funds, we'll have to start preparing for cuts on our campuses. The campuses with deficits would see them grow potentially a little more. And we'll have to have plans to downscale their operations to match their existing revenue, even though we might be getting a little bit more money for the overall system. So that will be very disappointing for the staff and students and prospective students of those campuses. We would have to revisit our enrollment plans for 20, 27, 28, and look at can we continue to increase enrollment? Do we have to downscale enrollment? We would never kick out any of the students that we currently have, but it would mean that the incoming class would be smaller than the prior incoming class. At the moment, we have been increasing our incoming classes year over year, and we may have to start scaling that back down again and bring the enrollment down to where we can afford to instruct the students and provide them services. We are very committed to ensuring that our students have an excellent experience, that our instruction continues to be of high quality, and that the students who are enrolled are helped to graduate, that we get them through. And so if we have to help fewer students, then that would be where that discussion needs to go. But we would try to deal with many things before we get there. We have tried to do some things behind the scenes that don't really touch on students. For example, we have been refinancing very old bonds, trying to get better rates for them, trying to restructure that debt so our annual payments are a little bit smaller. That frees up money on our campuses. You may recall I said we spent 6% of our campus budgets on old debt service right now. So the more we can get that under control, the better. We have an initiative with CSU right now where we are combining our purchasing power across our campuses to purchase equipment and supplies together. And by combining our purchase power, we are getting discounts across the systems. So. So we're trying to save money in those ways. We're trying to think a little bit, what can we do that doesn't touch the students, but could help us save some money?

Yeah, I appreciate your presentations today. A couple questions, getting to some specific topics of core functions versus non core functions, understanding school budgets and university budgets. It's my understanding that some of the non core components of the budget actually enhance the student experience and also the recruitment, retention experience of faculty members. Can you talk to me a little bit about what some of these non core functions are and how they impact the budget?

So when I hear this response and I think about housing, parking, food, I would think many students would think those are core functions of them attaining academic success. And yet some of our fiscal constraints might put pressure on those systems. So I certainly support fully funding the UCs and I don't see how we can separate food and shelter and transportation from the academic experience. When we look at core versus non core, my concern would be around some sort of negative feedback loop that would be created if we start to pare down some of these non core functions and their indirect experience for the student. Maybe then a student might consider, well, if I'm not going to get sufficient housing or the food quality goes down, I might choose to go out of state or I might choose to delay accessing higher education. So I would love to see us get back to where we're removing all those deferrals and fully funding the ucs to make sure that our students and our faculty and our staff can have the best experience possible within the UC system. Another question I have is regarding the six year, and this might be a delicate one, the six year tuition guarantee. My understanding was that for most students we would like to see them graduate in four years. And to our chair's comment, maybe there's even an opportunity for us to look at ways we can streamline processes towards earning a bachelor's degree. What percentage of our students need to stay for six years in order to complete their degree programs and what are the barriers causing them to extend their degrees for six years?

their operating schedules.

So this is an exact example of how I think some of the non core and the core areas intersect. Certainly if we can get our students out on time in four years, if we can fund those core core competencies of class availability, then that does create a new student generation to come in possibly at the higher fee structure and increase revenues for those same increasing costs.

Yeah. So please keep making progress towards that goal. I would love to see us make sure that our team students get the courses required, that they have a sense of belonging and they have food and housing security which are as you said, non core comp functions. But they clearly impact graduation timelines. So keep working towards those goals and want to echo thoughts of my committee colleagues here around fully supporting funding ucs. Thank you.

Yes, Alex and I Velasquez with the Department of Finance. As it relates to enrollment, the 202627 Governor's Budget does not make any changes to the 2025 Budget act actions adopted as it relates to the 2026-27 academic year enrollment targets. The Governor's Budget also does not propose any 202728 academic year enrollment targets for the University of California. This concludes my remarks and I'm happy to take any questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Bouve with the Legislative Analyst Office. So we have four recommendations regarding UC enrollment and to provide a brief context, the 2526 Budget act set target enrollment for 2526 and 2627. And UC expects to exceed its current year enrollment target of roughly 210,000 full time equivalent students by over 5,000 students. It also estimates that it will surpass the budget year enrollment target of roughly 213,000 students. So our first recommendation is that despite UC exceeding its current year enrollment target, the legislature maintain the original enrollment target for 2627 which as I said was roughly 213 students. And our recommendation is based on a few key factors. So first, over the past 10 years we note that UC enrollment growth has has surpassed the underlying demographic trend such as high school graduate transfer rates. We also Note that there are signs that enrollment pressure has weakened. As was noted earlier, the number of applications received by UC have increased, yet at the same time, the admission rates for most UC campuses have increased significantly. UC is also currently enrolling a much higher percentage of high school graduate around 8.4% than it did 10 years ago when that share was 7%, also exceeding the state target, so notably in 2526, while at the same time, instituting a hiring freeze appears to have contributed to some programmatic impacts such as larger class sizes. And lastly, when the state set its enrollment targets last June, it was indicating what level of enrollment it believed it could afford on an ongoing basis. Our second recommendation is to fund enrollment separately and on top of any base increase for uc. Currently, we believe that funding separately enrollment would provide additional transparency, accountability and legislative oversight as the funding would be directly linked to an enrollment expectation as the state has traditionally done. We recommend funding enrollment using the marginal cost formula and under this methodology, funding the enrollment for the same enrollment growth of roughly 2,968 students would cost the state just under $43 million. Our third recommendation is to pause the non resident reduction plan. We believe that the non resident replacement plan is based on the questionable assumption that at the high demand campuses, Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego, those campuses can only accommodate additional resident undergraduate student by replacing non resident students. And the evidence does really bear this out. So first, we know that during the first four years of the plan implementation, those three campuses have enrolled 4,500 additional resident students on top of the 31 non resident student that were replaced. Also, given data provided by uc, there doesn't seem to be strong evidence that those campuses are facing instructional space constraint in terms of classroom or labs, or that they are facing housing capacity constraints. Second, the non resident replacement plan is a relatively expensive way of adding resident students to these campuses. The state is currently paying more than $33,000 per student to replace a non resident with a resident student. Yet by comparison, under the marginal cost formula, adding an additional resident student costs $14,000. And the difference between those two rates has to do with the fact that the state has to backfill UC for the non resident supplemental tuition that UC is losing when they're not admitting those non resident students. So an alternative to this non resident reduction plan would be for the legislature and the state to fund directly enrollment of resident student on those three campuses. And if we use the same marginal cost formula, funding the exact same number of resident student would cost around $25 million, which is much less than the current $61 million that's included in the current budget proposal for the current year and the $36 million that we would be saved under this alternative enrollment plan could be used to help the state address its structural deficit. We also note that as we let resident enrollment increase under this alternative plan, the campuses will eventually reach the statutory goal of maintaining non resident enrollment at no more than 18% of total undergraduate enrollment. It might take a bit longer for the three high demand campuses to reach the 18%, but eventually they will reach that percent. Our final recommendation is to hold UC enrollment flat for 2728. As we've discussed earlier, the state is projected to run a substantial budget deficit in that fiscal year and having UC enroll additional student, while potentially the state might not provide additional support, could lead to adverse programmatic impacts such as larger class size, fewer course offering or less academic support. That concludes my remark and I'm happy to take any questions.

All right, thank you, assembly members. For the record, I'm Seiya Vertanen for the University of California. The Compact set a goal of increasing California undergraduate enrollment by 1% annually. The legislature reinforced this goal with annual budget bill language included in the Budget Acts directing the University to increase enrollment by specified full time equivalent student numbers. The University has met and exceeded the Compact goal for California enrollment resident enrollment growth. In fact, not only did we meet the 202526 Compact goal with the fall of 2025 enrollment, we have already met the 2026-27 Compact goal for California undergraduate enrollment growth. Slide 4 in the handout I provided shows the undergraduate enrollment growth during the Compact. The University has grown California undergraduates by about 18,800 full time equivalent students since the start of the Compact. This is a major achievement in providing access and one that was made possible by the certainty of the annual base budget support through the Compact. Looking at this enrollment growth more closely, we can see that the success story is even better. Latinx students make up 60% of this California undergraduate student growth. Native American student enrollment increased by 50% during the compact. Having our student body more closely reflect the population of California is a win made possible by the Compact. Funding increases. Access to the University of California and the world class education we offer students is important to the UC Regents and to President Milliken. We are proud to increase the entering class of UC students and to have that class more closely reflect California's population than any other class in the university's history. For 2026-27. The university is planning to continue growing California undergraduates. The current plan for 2026-27 includes 2,721 new California students. This enrollment level would exceed the Compact enrollment goal. The University's ability to sustain these levels will depend in part on the availability of ongoing state support for campus operations. All enrollment growth costs money the the instructors to teach courses, the staff to provide student services, and additional financial aid provided are all costs tied to enrollment. As I mentioned in the previous item, core funds support our campus operations. Core funds include the state general fund, the student tuition and fees, the non resident supplemental tuition, as well as some other federal F and A funds and few smaller fund sources. Slide 5 in the handouts provided showed the available core funds per student over time. And when we discuss core funds, we subtract funds that were not spent on campus operations. When we discuss available core funds, we're taking out things like financial aid, bond payments, and payments to the UC Retirement Program. So those aren't funds that are getting spent on the campuses on students, but so we take them out when we're talking about what's available per student. And over the last 26 years the university has seen significant increases in our available core funds. But at the same time we've also grown enrollment substantially. And what this means is that our available dollars per student have been declining over the last quarter century. And in order to avoid further erosions, it's important that the University have sufficient funding to cover inflationary cost increase. Slide 6 in the handouts highlights the Compact goals that have been achieved and which are threatened if the University cannot cover enrollment costs. In addition to resident enrollment targets, the Compact also set a goal for three UC campuses that are in high demands Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego to replace their undergraduate non resident enrollment with California undergraduates until each of those campuses campuses reaches a non resident level equal to 18% of the total undergraduate student body. The Compact further specified that the state would provide funding to backfill revenue losses from the non resident supplemental tuition to the campuses and that the goal of replacing non residents with California undergraduates is contingent upon provision of these funds. Receiving funding to replace lost non resident supplemental tuition is imperative as non resident supplemental tuition is now a significant part of campus budgets. In fact, each non resident student funds not only their own cost of attendance, but also provides enough funding to support 2.7 California undergraduates. The 1.35 billion paid annually by our non resident students is a critical support funding for campuses. Also under the Tuition Stability Plan, non resident supplemental tuition Grows with each incoming cohort. The funding provided by the state is fixed and does not grow over time. This means that over time the replacement non residents also represent an opportunity cost for the incremental fee increases that were never collected. The legislature further defined the compact goal of non resident replacement with California undergraduates in the budget bill language as 902 students annually for all three campuses combined. This goal was funded for the first three years of the compact with 202425 being the last year the funding was provided. During these three years, the university exceeded the non resident replacement goals specified in the budget bill language. Across the UC system, non resident undergraduate students are now at 15.2% of the total undergraduate student body. This is far below the goal of 18% for the system. Admissions for the 202526 year took place in the spring of 2025. At that time, the federal government was making rapid changes to international student visas and even halted all visa processing for a time. These changes created uncertainty in international non resident admissions and campuses made more offers with the expectation that yield would be lower. This was a miscalculation and while there were non resident students replaced at the three campuses, it was not the full than two students for graduate students. I want to mention that the University of California is also requesting 5.5 million in ongoing funding to expand four health professional programs. These are dentistry, optometry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine. Each of these programs serves an important function in California healthcare. Unfortunately, many areas of the state are lacking sufficient health professionals to ensure services can be delivered in a timely way. Expanding the UC health professional programs with an emphasis on serving underserved populations would help alleviate the state's healthcare workforce shortages in the long term. Thank you for your time.

So the state share of the marginal cost formula for 26, 27 is around $14,000. And it did grow over time. So if we were to look at the five years you have on the graph, the state share would have been slightly smaller, closer to 12,000 for some of the earlier year.

So if actually I could do so. That's the cost per student, which you calculated by dividing the number of students or dividing the increase in the base funding that was in the compact by the number of students. Is that how you calculated that?

Yes.

So let me make sure I'm understanding what you are saying, because I want to be very clear. What you're trying to communicate to us is that if we wanted to fund the growth of 19,000 students at the marginal cost of $14,000 per student, we would actually be funding an additional $43 million.

You can come to the table. Yeah. Your colleague.

Okay. So what I'm trying. Let me try to ask

trying to get clarity on. And you may be able to. You may Know where I'm going. Which is what is the cost that we've, what is that investment that we've made? What has been the cost of that investment to this number of students?

Right. So in the latest number, which is 2526, it'd be a 270, $70 million. Okay, and what was the increase again, knowing that there was deferrals and that that confuses it all. But what is the actual increase in base funding? Because I think that's what your colleague is trying to share with us is that we're funding these increases with some number, but it's not tied to the number of students, it's just funding to the system. Just generally.

Sure.

That does. I think the point was the funding provided exceeded the marginal cost of a student for several years. Substantially. Now granted, when you, so when you calculate the marginal cost of a student, is that the, is that like, does that include the increase in costs associated with the cost of living with cpi with obviously, you know, there's some agreements with employees that require increases. Is that, are you baking the full cost in or is it just a number taking at a point in time?

Okay, so I asked those questions for my colleagues just because we can approach this differently. We can say we'd like to see UC grow by X number of students and calculate using multiple talents that we have before us here and others and say, what is it going to take to fund that growth as opposed to here you go, 5% just because we think it sounds great and get us some more students, which has been, in my opinion, what appears to have happened over the last several years. You have a comment?

Thank you for interjecting, because I thought I had asked that question and maybe I did not. I thought that's what I had asked when they asked, did you bake in all of the costs? We're hearing now that there are other inflationary costs and pressures that UC faces that you did not calculate in your figure.

But your testimony is here is that the LAO is missing other costs that you have that were borne onto the UC with that figure. So maybe it's time to recalculate how we or reassess the formula. Is what you're suggesting.

Yeah. Do you have some comments to that?

And so you have both of those issues before you.

Yes. Our recommendation is based on the idea that to grow access to of these campuses for resident student, you don't need to actually decrease the number of non resident student because the campuses have demonstrated that they have the capacity to accommodate more than the additional 902 resident students as is expected in the plan. So if we can add more resident student without decreasing the number of non resident students, there's no need to compensate UC for any losses of non resident supplemental tuition. And that's why the alternative we propose has a cost of 25 million instead of 61 million.

we the only. So it is much cheaper to add resident students rather than go through the process of replacing non residents. We do think the state is at the moment compensating us at a slightly lower rate than those new non residents are costing us. Non resident supplemental tuition for 20, 26, 27 is going to be over 39,000 per student at the state's reimbursing us at 33,000 per student. So there's a little bit of lost money there. The other thing I would point out is that if we freeze non residents and try to get to a lower percentage, we are, there's an opportunity cost to the campuses that if we had kept the non residents at the current percentage level that the state has funded us down to that differential, there is a lot of money as those students begin to. As we lose non resident students and can't add revenue to our campuses. Right.

You are correct. The current university policy does not permit differential fees on our campuses. We charge every student the same regardless what campus they attend. We did begin to look into what it would take to have differential non resident tuition at our most sought after campuses in order to fund a downward trend in those non resident students. And because the amount of students we would have to decrease was so high and our non resident tuition is bringing in a lot of revenue, we were actually closer to like $52,000 just for the non resident piece at which campuses at Berkeley, Louisiana and San Diego to get down to below 18%. And what we worry about is that would make us the most expensive university in the United States for non residents. While our campuses are amazing, there are others that rank a little higher than we do. If you look at all privates and publics together though, we are obviously among the best for the publics. And what we worry about is then losing a student interest in actually coming to our campuses or even further skewing our non resident population towards extremely wealthy international students.

I would think that the competitiveness, the price point would be about equal to some of our competitor institutions rather than ranking above them in cost, which is what amount. I don't have that in front of me. It would be a lot of the private universities on the East Coast.

Dr. Patel, first, thank you for your presentation. I would like to get granular with a specific student population. Are students that come in as residents when they are on their parents visa status or refugee status or something like that, they're coming in with resident status. But then perhaps on a certain visa they may graduate, age out of that visa, then shift over to a non resident status and end up paying non resident tuition despite their families being residents of California. Is my understanding, Is that correct? When they age out of their parents visa, they become non residents.

Exactly.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Follow up. I did express this directly with my meeting with the office of the President in my office. He knows that I'm very concerned about this loophole and want to make sure that students don't feel the pressure to somehow lose status, which I am hearing that students feel the familial cost pressure that might make them make really terrible decisions. So I have been approached by students that are very concerned about this amongst their peers and I would like to see that loophole closed. Certainly especially if we are going to consider changing the cost structures for non resident tuition.

So thank you for that.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you everyone. Just follow up on the Chair's comments and remember we just as the Chair said, we had this robust conversation last year on the replacement non residents and the tuition cost there. And I heard in your comments to the UC system that sounds like there was a UC Regents committee that's working on these issues

of raising the non resident student fees.

this issue and I second those comments as well. So definitely want to look at that analysis and the Chair mentioned it. But I do believe that the demand at the three most sought after campuses will continue to be there. The numbers are there. Here's the stories anecdotally when traveling around the district and everywhere that whether gcla, Berkeley, San Diego, the demand is very, very strong. And you know, with the Olympics coming to Los Angeles in a couple of years, there's just a lot of different things. California continues to lead as a public higher education institution and the University of California is that system. And so whether it's 39,000, 52,000 or numbers in between, or just looking at different cost studies, maybe do a study or poll just to see what students appetite are for different fees. But I think when we look at trying to continue to increase the number of in state residents at our most in depth demand campuses, I think that's something that as a legislature, as a body we're going to continue to highlight. And so just really want to highlight that point once more. And so I think anything we can do to continue to increase the number of in state residents at our campuses and impossibly with differential fees at our most in demand campuses to offset, as you mentioned, when you look at any decrease of out of state residents in our most demand campuses, how do we make sure that we continue to grow in state residents at those campuses? I think that's a question that we're going to continue to grapple with. And the UC system is those campuses are key to the future of California in the state of our economy and the growth of our economy. And so really would love to see a report back on those issues.

Thank you, Mr.

Office, Florence Bouvet with the Legislative Analyst Office. Before I provide the overview, I wanted to mention that we have covered this topic in more detail in our UC brief that you'll find on the ELIO website. And we also have on the website two ED tables that provide additional data on the federal funding allocation for research, the medical center and financial aid on the website. So I will just provide an overview before Ms. Virtanen provide more detail. So first, federal funding is an important component of UC budget and it accounts for roughly one third of its total funding. In 2425, UC received more than $19 billion in federal funding and these funds must be used for specific purposes and generally they cannot be redirected to support UC's core operations. Most federal funding supports three major areas of UC operations, healthcare delivery and training, research and student financial aid. If you look at page 17 of your agenda, you'll see a breakdown of the allocation of federal funding across the six UC Medical Center. Overall, nearly half of UC Medical Center's patient care revenue comes from the federal government. On page 16 of the agenda, you'll see how much each campus relies on federal funding for research. And here again, federal funding account for slightly more than half of total research funding provided to the UC campuses for student financial aid. UC students received again in 2425 about $2 billion of federal financial aid. And of that $2 billion, half was gift aid and the other half was roughly student loans. When it comes to the recent federal policy changes, they're all affecting these three areas. For health care, changes to medical eligibility rules and federal reimbursement policies could reduce federal payments to UC Medical center and increase uncompensated care. If some patients are losing their health coverage for research, near term risks appear to be more limited than initially expected, as many of the proposed federal research cuts have been paused or reversed by court decisions, and Congress has recently rejected most of the reduction that were proposed by the federal Administration. Finally, for financial aid, the largest impacts are likely to fall on graduate and professional students as those federal changes eliminate the Grad plus loan program and introduce new federal caps on federal loans. That concludes my overview and I'm happy to answer any questions later.

Thank you. For the record, I'm Seiya Vertanen for the University of California. The University has operations in every California county that touch on the different aspects of life for Californians. While many people are familiar with the university's 10 instructional campuses, we also have six academic health centers that operate 20 hospital licenses, we have hundreds of faculty practice practices, primary care clinics throughout the state, we have agricultural extension research stations, and our faculty research projects take place in many locations. Slide 7 in the handout shows a pie chart for the estimated 2025-26 total university expenditures as of the end of February 2026. As you can see, medical centers as well as sales and services, which includes medical clinics, dining services, housing and parking are nearly two thirds of the University's annual expenditures. Traditionally, the federal funding that supports the University's various services throughout California have been relatively stable. In both 202324 and in 2024 25, over 17 billion of the university's total budget was provided by the federal government. With the passage of HR1, also known as the Big Beautiful Bill, there were changes to the current federal funding allocations as well as future allocations to various programs. There have also been changes to federal research funding. Prior to H R1, federal funding for research remains unpredictable, and policies such as the H1B visa fees and immigration restrictions have made international collaboration more difficult and benefits from it more difficult to achieve. Currently, 172 million in research grants have been canceled or suspended, with another 800 million in court cases fighting cancellation. This unpredictability is disrupting current research and threatens the research ecosystem that has made innovation possible. Our financial challenges are not going away. We have benefited from court rulings on federal funding cuts, but those decisions are under appeal. The ultimate outcome is uncertain. University of California affiliated faculty received five Nobel Prizes this year. This is a unique achievement and is made possible by available research funding and a university environment that values curiosity and innovation. This innovation fuels California's economy as well. UC alumni launch more companies than the alumni of any other university in the world and in 2024 alone, 67 new startup companies were formed based on UC inventions. Federal funding changes will also impact the University of California academic health centers. UC Health's designated public hospitals are safety net hospitals for the state. We are the second largest provider of inpatient medical care in the state. We treat patients from 99% of the state's zip codes and our specialty health services, such as the UC Davis Burn center are some of the only available for large parts of the state. UC Health public hospitals provide high quality care to those in need, regardless of their insurance ability to pay. The acceptance of all patients has led to some financial losses prior to the passage of HR1, with UC Public Hospitals providing about 4 billion in uncompensated Medicare and Medi Cal care. HR1 imposes new bureaucratic barriers on Medi Cal eligible patients seeking health insurance, including additional paperwork for work requirements and more frequent eligibility determinations. The LAO estimated that 2.1 million Californians may be at risk of losing Medi Cal coverage due to these additional requirements. As people lose their health care coverage, we anticipate that UC Health's uncompensated care costs will will increase. HR1 reduces federal share of Medi Cal spending, also known as fmap, for emergency health care services to undocumented individuals. That change will take effect in October of 2026 and will lead to a funding reduction for UC's public hospitals beginning in 2028. HR1 cuts state directed payments, a key financing mechanism for public hospitals. Unless Congress reverses this reduction, it will reduce payments to UC academic health centers which provide primary care, specialty care and inpatient care. In addition to our extensive health care services, UC operates one of the largest healthcare professional education programs in the nation. HR1 essentially eliminates the MCO tax, also known as the Managed Care Organization tax, which has provided UC 75 million in 2025 and in 2026 to support and expand medical residency positions. These extensive impacts on the University of California won't be contained to our students, staff and faculty services the University of California provides statewide will be impacted. Restructuring or eliminating services must be considered for aligning revenues and expenditures. Thank you for your time today.

No specific comments or no proposals as it relates to the loss or potential threat of federal funds. But the Administration and Department of Finance is in constant communications with the University of California along with our health team, just to monitor any potential threats and upcoming losses.

As a former graduate student of UC Irvine, I understand the value of NIH funding on our campuses and and want to stress that I hear loud and clear that Congress is starting to reject some of those cuts. But I wanted clarity on are they still considering reductions in the indirect cost percentage on those grants as those grants return?

Okay, that is good news because we know that research takes a lot of infrastructure to conduct, not just the direct pipetters and tips and students to do the work, but a lot of support structures from the UC system. We want to make sure that our undergrads as well as our graduate students get hands on experience as they develop their interest in STEM careers. Thank you for that.

Mr. Fung, thank you so much. Mr. Chair, just a quick question. Also on research cut, so thank you for the updates there. $800 million of research grants that are part of court cases fighting cancellation and $172 million of research grants have been canceled or suspended. And as Dr. Patel mentioned, we know that students ability to gain experience to learn in these labs, to do research and to learn from are postdoc researchers from research on the campus. I remember when I was an undergrad at ucla I had a chance of to intern some of the labs as well. And so just that student experience was so critical. Do we have any information on the ground as to the level of impacts right now to our students and their experiences in labs? Like how many, what percentage of students are being affected?

Okay, thank you so much for that context and anything we would do to continue to push back against these guides and to support the efforts. There is something we want to continue to uplift.

Thank you, Mr.

Thank you. Very briefly before I ask questions because one of our colleagues needs to go and we have a quorum and we will be taking One action today. So we'll call the roll.

Here.

Here. Hadwick. Patel?

Wallace. Okay, we have a quorum on the. I am going to have some questions on this issue, but on the previous issue of UC enrollment, we're going to have two things. One is a request to the lao. Given the discussion that we had earlier, we'd like you to bring back or prepare for us a report on funding based on your recommendations on a base increase to the university and also an enrollment based budget per our conversations. Is that, Ms. Bouvet? Is that clear to you or do you need more direction?

Thank you.

And then chair, if I may just really quickly. Traditional. The administration has not necessarily reviewed the language. We remain open to conversations, but at this time remain opposed until we see the language for further review and communications.

You required such a report back in 2019. That took us approximately seven months to. To complete. That was a cost estimate of reducing non residents. So I would say probably next December.

Oh, you want it by May?

Oh my. Okay. I will work with the committee consultant. Thank you. On a reasonable timeline or what we can produce within that timeframe.

Alvarez?

Aye.

Aye.

the

So Chair Alvarez, I think you're referring to the recent federal Department of Education reclassification of graduate degrees as not being professional degrees.

Yes. What that did was it limited the amount of loans that students can take to attend those programs. And unfortunately now the loan limits annually are below the total cost of attendance for those programs, which means that any student who either doesn't get a lot of financial aid or doesn't come in with their own full funding is going to face severe challenges in completing those degrees. We have a list of them that was compiled for the hearing on March 3rd in this committee when we discussed financial aid. But some of them I know, nursing is one education, maybe Lao.

That is the University of California request of augmentation to the budget. That was not in the part of the governor's budget.

We would support programs in optometry, dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine.

Medical. Entirely medically based. It's recruiting students who want.

all defined as professional. Yes.

That's correct. Our proposal is to expand enrollment in those programs.

Good morning Chair Alvarez and members of the Committee. My name is Nicole Richardson and I am the UC system wide Title IX Director. Today marks my one year anniversary with uc. Over the past year I have learned so much from my colleagues and have developed a deepened appreciation for the culture, values and mission of UC. I am proud to be part of UC's ongoing commitment to preventing and addressing discrimination and harassment based on sex, including sexual assaults and other forms of sexual violence in compliance with state and federal law. Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee. UC's Office of the President has a dedicated Office of Civil Rights, or SOCCER for short, which includes the System wide Title IX Office, or Styxo for short, which I lead. Each UC campus and location also has a dedicated Title IX Officer. Collectively, the local Title IX Officers and Styxo are primarily responsible for ensuring that education, work and patient care environments are free from all forms of sexual harassment. The System Wide Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment, or SVSH Policy is periodically updated by and is implemented by stxo. The SVSH Policy prohibits all form of harassment based on sex and applies to all faculty, staff, students and third parties such as visitors and patients. Additionally, there are accompanying investigation and adjudication frameworks which clearly set forth steps to complete the resolution process under the SVSH Policy. Additionally, the materials contain information regarding remedial and supportive measures and potential disciplinary actions or corrective measures depending on the outcome. In 2025, Styxo issued and updated the SVSH policy and adjudication frameworks to incorporate technical changes required by state law. Styxo provides education, guidance and strategic and investigative support across the system to ensure consistent implementation of the SVSH policy. For example, Styxo hosts monthly virtual meetings with Title IX officers and their deputies to facilitate sharing of best practices along with updates or training on trends or changes in the law and policy. Each Title IX Officer also has a monthly one on one meeting with me and the Executive Director for Soccer, to whom they have a reporting line. Further, Soccer hosts biweekly office hours where Title IX officers have access to ask questions and consult with soccer leadership. In June 2025, based on feedback from UC community members who expressed a preference for a UC developed training, SOCCER launched the new Sexual Violence and Harassment Anti Discrimination Prevention and Education Student training. Shape, as it is called, was developed by SOCCER in consultation with other UCOP professionals and campus and location representatives. All UC students are required to take this training annually to ensure they fully understand their rights and responsibilities under the SVSH policy and how and where to go to make a report or seek help regarding sexual harassment, assault or violence. A similar training was launched in fall 2023 for employees and supervisors. We know that having adequate support resources is key to creating a climate where individuals feel safe and supported. Each UC campus has a Center for Advocacy Resources and Education or CARE office to provide survivor support services as well as advocacy and healing services. Campuses also have respondent Support Service coordinators to assist individuals responding to allegations of misconduct under the SVSH policy by providing help to navigate the resolution process and offer referrals to campus and community resources for emotional and mental health support in SVSH matters. Soccer Leadership regularly attends meetings with campus care directors and respondent support service coordinators to learn about student concerns from the perspective of those who have been directly impacted by the SVSH policy and adjudication, investigation and adjudication frameworks. SOCCER uses this feedback from these valued stakeholders to inform policy updates and training. At the University of California, we do not tolerate sexual harassment or violence in any form. In creating SOCCER Styxo and the system wide policies, UC has signaled the importance of these issues at the highest level of leadership. Our goal is not merely to comply with state and federal law, but to go beyond those minimum requirements to prioritize the well being of our community members. Our commitment to both fairness and compassion is a cornerstone of the University's culture of safety, respect and accountability. Thank you and I welcome your questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Mr. Chair and thank you for your partnership and efforts on the bill package we had a couple years ago. And thank you to the Assembly Higher Education Committee staff, especially Alan, for work and efforts around Title 9. And congratulations to you on your one year anniversary.

And everything you're doing at the UCOP and really looking at policies and procedures across the University of California system. And on page 22, I mentioned that SOCR leadership regular attends meetings with students and making sure that we have student feedback which information is used to best inform practices at the UC system. Can you give one example of how student feedback has influenced best practices and any policy updates there?

We meet with the CARE directors and the respondent service coordinators, their directors, and they have direct contact with students who are part of the process. And they share with us some of the challenges that the students face going through the process and we try to incorporate that into our updates and training.

On Saturna Industries, I've just completed my one year and I actually started doing that a lot more now that I've gotten to know a lot of my colleagues within uc, I have started to reach out to collaborate with my colleagues across the other segments. Recently I participated in a training with csu.

Thank you so much for that collaboration. Anything we can do to continue to foster a collaboration, especially around Title 9 issues, is critical. So I really appreciate your leadership there. Thank you, Mr.

issues

Thank you for that question. As I mentioned in my remarks, we issued an updated policy and framework last year based on the slate of bills that came into law. So at this time we're basically implementing those new provisions and we continue to consult with the campuses and locations to evaluate any financial resource or other impact as we see those new provisions go into effect and how it impacts our population. We definitely will bringing that forward and sharing that.

Right.

Thank you.

Alex and I. Velazquez with the Department of Finance. As it relates to basic needs, the Governor's budget does not propose changes to the ongoing support for UC's basic needs, rapid rehousing and mental health services programs and maintains the current service level as follows. For basic needs, this includes 15.8 million ongoing for rapid rehousing, 3.7 million. Lastly, for mental health, 21.3 million for a rough total of 48.1 million. This concludes my remarks and I'm happy to take any questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Florence Bouve with the Legislative Analyst Office. The state funds three categorical programs that you see that are generally viewed as addressing student basic need. I was mentioned earlier food, rapid rehousing and mental health. On page 23 of your agenda, you'll have a description of the distribution of the funding for those three programs across UC campuses. The state began funding all three of these programs at UC beginning in 2019-20. As was mentioned, the governor's budget leaves funding for these three programs flat in 2627 and there are no new state proposals for these programs this year. The federal government, however, recently tightened up certain exemptions such as that calfresh recipients are now going to be required to work 20 hours a week to maintain their benefits, and my understanding is that college students have to meet an exemption if they are to be eligible for CalFresh, and these changes are going to effect starting in June 2026. UC is likely to cover the anticipated impacts on UC students. So I'll just note to finish that UC students are unlike many other CalFresh recipients in that UC students also can qualify for Pell Grant, CAL Grant, Middle Class Scholarships, and UC Institutional Aid, which all are gift aid that can help UC students cover their living costs.

Thank you. For the record, I'm Seiya Vertanen for the University of California The University of California's definition of basic needs includes a list of comprehensive needs representing the minimum resources necessary to holistically support all students in their daily lives. In 2017, the state provided the university with $2.5 million in one time funds to develop a hunger free campus pilot. Since then, the annual state appropriation has grown to 15.8 million for food, security and housing programs, another 3.7 million for student rapid rehousing programs, and $21 million for mental health. The University now has a robust basic needs infrastructure to serve our students. Each campus has a basic needs center offering a range of services including permanent food banks, pop up pantries, free food cafes, pay as you go food trucks and CalFresh application assistance, emergency housing rent subsidy pilot programs, emergency grants and crisis response. In addition to the work done on campuses, UC has established collaborations with community partners and other public higher education segments to expand the basic needs infrastructure. Intersegmental working groups have enhanced collaboration and shared best practices. Community partnerships have expanded access to food, housing, public benefits and coordinated support services, thereby enabling campuses to respond effectively to both ongoing needs and acute crises. Direct partnerships between county offices of health and social services and campuses have ensured regular office hours for on campus county staff to assist students with CalFresh applications. And lastly, UC was the first higher education institution in the country to establish a contract with USDA to accept EBT at campus food retail locations. In 2024, 25 campuses served approximately 77,800 unique students system wide. A detailed study conducted at four campuses found that food pantries made up about half of all services used by undergraduates and 60% of all services used by graduate students. CalFresh assistance and prepared food were the next most utilized services. In depth analysis of students who utilize campus basic needs services and campuses who do not utilize basic needs services services found a strong correlation between graduation rates and food insecurity as well as a correlation between retention rates and food insecurity. Students who started as freshmen at UC and experienced low food security had an 84.3% six year graduation rate compared to a 92.6% graduation rate for students who did not experience food insecurity and 8.3% difference. This data points to the importance of continuing basic needs programs on campuses to ensure that students have the support that they need to graduate. We discussed federal impacts to the University in the previous item, but I wanted to mention that HR1 imposes work requirements of 20 hours per week for CalFresh recipients beginning July, June 1st of 2026. This will be as the spring term is wrapping up on most campuses, so the true impact of this change has yet to be felt. Please note that parenting students who have a child under the age of 14 are exempt from these work requirements and in 2022-23, approximately 58,000 UC students received CalFresh benefits totaling $17.3 million. Prior to direct state appropriations for basic needs, the University's approach to food and housing security was to adjust financial aid allocations and to ensure that financial aid covered the tuition and fees of as many as the lowest income students as possible. In addition to the upcoming CalFresh eligibility changes, the state budget is proposing to not renew the one time funds for middle class scholarship which will impact about 100,000 UC students and their ability to cover the cost of their education. Thank you for your time and I'm available for questions.

So we are currently looking at what can be done in establishing further community partnerships, especially with local food banks near campuses. But at the moment, the University of California, unless we were to get the full compact funding, we do not have the funding to backfill for the over $17 million in costs that it would take to fully cover what students are currently getting in CalFresh benefits.

Our current financial aid does assume that students would work up to 20 hours a week. So some of our lower income students probably meet that work requirement. But oftentimes students don't have consistent work schedules. They're often working minimum wage jobs, often in the food industry where they might bounce anywhere between 10 and 20 hours a week. We do not permit our graduate students to work more than 20 hours a week and some of them have appointments for less time than that. The students that do manage to work would then receive, continue to receive those benefits. And students who do not meet those hours would have three months of CalFresh benefits and then be permanently dropped. So we're likely to see these impacts really start hitting in the fall quarter. And at this time, the university does not have a plan to fully backfill for this. We are trying to establish more community partnerships to get additional food donations for our food banks and to make students aware of where in the surrounding communities there may be food banks that they can turn to. But as the economy is not as strong for everyone right now, there's a lot of people turning to food banks and we're hearing about food banks being overdrawn.

Thank you so much. Mr. Chair, just a quick question on page 23 of the report. So there's a breakdown of the basic needs, rapid rehousing and mental health funds. How are those funds allocated? Is it at the campus level? At the system wide level, how are those decisions made?

Okay, thank you for that context. And then on page 25 of the report on student mental health prevention, I saw that Santa Barbara says NEA is there. Do we have information as to prevention and early invention on mental health services for Santa Barbara?

Okay, thank you for that context. And anything we can do around basic needs continue to meet the needs of our students is critical. So really appreciate the work and efforts around the space here. Thank you, Mr.

Thank you. We will hold this open. Thank you to the panel. And we brings us to our final panel today, which also should be no surprise. We've talked about it at the beginning of the set of hearings here in higher education in this Education Finance Subcommittee. It's an issue that has been raised by colleagues which is common course numbering. Wanted to get an update on where this is given UC's very critical role to this being successful. So I think we're going to start with the office of the President.

Thank you.

Thank you. Legislative Analyst Office.

Great, thank you. So the Budget act, Finance and Lao allocated 10 million for a work group to develop the system. Where is that expenditure? Has it all been spent? Do you know?

Great, thank you. I'll probably ask when the Chancellor or when community colleges come as well. You don't have any idea? Okay. The. I heard a figure of 150 templates. I want to make sure I understand what that means. Those, those are not actually numbered courses yet. Because I also heard that there was some rollout of something. Please, please provide more, more specific details because I think I missed it. I just caught that you said something rolled out in 2020 last year and more will be rolling out. So I'm just trying to understand where are we? What does that mean? How many courses are currently numbered? Common with common numbers. Let's start with that.

Can I ask you, what does a community college student see when they see that? Do they. Besides the number, does it tell them this is now the same as uccsu? What else does it signal to a student who, you know, may not have a counselor sitting next to them saying that's the right course for UC and csu? What are they seeing.

So a student would either have to enter and assist or I am assuming, and I'll ask this to the community colleges, they may be signaling through their course catalog this is being offered and it's equivalent to a UC and CSU introduction to statistics.

Okay, I'll have to ask about the utilization of ASSIST because I assume not every student knows to go to ASSIST and type in and get feedback on that. So. But you've already given me more information than I had coming in, which is great. Six courses were rolled out as of last fall with 14 templates. And then phase two will be. You were about to get into that.

18 above the six or 18 total

Okay, again, very helpful there. I guess my, my other question on this front is from the six. Oh, where is there a public facing report document that exists as you're doing this work in terms of how someone, how someone in the public ourselves can see what are the courses that are. That you've achieved in terms of common course numbering? Which ones are being worked on for phase two? How does someone get information if it's not through an oversight hearing of a legislature?

Thank you, initiators. And what is the next phase after fall of this year? Because by July 1st of 2027, the education code is requiring essentially all courses. And at the rate it sounds a little bit like that might be a challenge.

So are you channeling to us today that you don't believe that you'll be able will be able to meet education code requirement of July 1, 2027 for common course numbering?

If I ask the Chancellor's office if they are receiving all support coordination from all institutions, UC and csu, should I expect to hear some concerns about anything in particular that the UC is doing or not doing as it relates to advancing the goal of a July 2027 implementation?

When is the next gathering of the appropriate group for the phase three phase of the project?

Do they normally meet on a monthly basis? On a regular. Monthly. What's the work group arrangement?

Bi weekly. Okay. Sounds frequent. All right. I'll be asking same questions of the other segments, so appreciate you providing that information. It's very helpful. No additional questions or comments on this. Thank you, all of you, for your time on this issue. We will hold this open and with that brings us to our public comment section. We will be taking public comments on items that were on today's agenda. We ask you to please step forward, introduce yourself and provide your comments to the committee. And we want to welcome you all and thank you for being here and for your patience listening to our presentations. We'll start with our first speaker. Please come forward. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Chair Alvarez and members Vincent Rosso with the University of California Student Association. On behalf of over 230,000 undergraduate students enrolled across nine of our campuses, UCSA is in strong support of the Governor and Legislature fully funding the UC for the 2627 budget. We're aligned with UC on the much needed fiscal support to operate our campuses. With the continued increases to enrollment as well as securing facilities bond measure for the Deferred maintenance Affordable Housing Bond to support student housing projects at growing campuses like Riverside, San Diego and Merced, and the Research bond to maintain UC's health and science research programs. We also elevate concern over equitable campus supports and basic needs. With UC admitting increasingly diverse cohorts of students and federal attacks to our equity programs and initiatives. We saw the Regents approve additional cohort based tuition hikes in November where UC students elevated the potential to tie a portion of tuition dollars to student services and basic needs. And similarly, we're asking the legislature to ensure that student services are being sustained, especially as demand increases across our campuses.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members. Excuse me, I'm Christina DeCaro, lobbyist for the California Veterinary Medical Association. A group consisting of veterinary medical professionals, animal shelters and animal welfare joined together in 2024 to pass SB 1233, which received an incredible level of support from the Legislature and the Governor. The law envisions creating high quality, high volume spay neuter programs at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the Western University College of Veterinary Medicine in Pomona. We are asking for $5 million in one time funds to launch the program to train our students in this innovative and effective surgical technique. This is one of the smartest things that we can do to address our pet overpopulation program in the state. We urge your strong support. And I've also been asked to extend the support of social compassion and legislation and the San Diego Humane Association Society.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Member Mr.

statewide association of public and private animal

We're not in denial about the pet overpopulation problem and we need to stop. Start working on the solutions. And this is part of it. And we ask for your support when the time comes.

Thank you,

support the HQ HVS curriculum as championed

supported by many of your colleagues within the assembly.

Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chair Matt Robinson on behalf of Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the United States. Also in support of the $5 million request for the training for HQ HV spay and neuter programs. I would just know this seems like a really good opportunity for the state to address something early before it becomes a much larger, much costlier program down the road. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chairperson Alvarez. Dr. Grant Miller, on behalf of the California Veterinary Medical association, just echoing the sentiments my colleagues and respectfully asking for your support of SP12 33 funding. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other members of the public, thank you all for being here today. We adjourn.