Following what some say has been a string of questionable decisions by the UC Board of Regents, a group of state lawmakers announced legislation Wednesday that would remove the autonomy of the UC system.

The proposed amendment to the California Constitution-authored by five legislators including State Senators Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, and Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield-would allow the state legislature to enact statutes affecting university policy.

"This constitutional amendment will ensure that the (UC Board of Regents) will no longer be above the law," said Adam Keigwin, chief of staff to Yee.

Under the amendment, the regents would still enact policy, he said. But, similar to the relationship the state has with the CSU system, the legislature will provide oversight and be able to the overturn the regents' decisions.

Recent actions taken by the regents that led to the proposed amendment include a 12 percent and 27 percent pay increase for newly hired UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann and UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi over their respective predecessors, according to Keigwin.

"When students have been hit with ... (fee increases) over the last five years while executives get a pay hike ... that is egregious," he said.

A statement released by the university strongly opposed the amendment, arguing that the legislature cannot manage the state's $25 billion deficit and would be unable to run the UC effectively.

"Tossing a ten-campus public research university that is the pride of California and the envy of the world into the Sacramento mix should be a non-starter," the statement read.

The statement also argued that recent cuts to higher education at the state level have posed the "biggest problem" for the university, which has seen a 40 percent decrease in state spending per student over the last 20 years.

"This has made it necessary to slash budgets, freeze salaries, reduce staffs and raise fees," the statement read. "Meanwhile the cost of the education we provide has remained fairly constant."

However, the legislature would not run the university's finances under the amendment but would provide necessary oversight on the regents' decisions, Keigwin said, adding that the legislature would step in if the regents introduced an "egregious" fee increase.

"The legislature is not going to be running this system on a day-to-day level," he said. "But when we say (regents') meetings should be open and public, that should happen."

UC Student Regent D'Artagnan Scorza said the state already has oversight with the UC budget, senate hearings, and ex officio regents.

"If the state wants to exercise greater control over the UC, it currently has five ex officio positions and members of both the executive and legislative branches who are regents," he said.

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education professor W. Norton Grubb, who studies higher education, said the university is not as dependent on state funding as the CSU system and the state should not treat the systems equally.

"(The university) is not really a public institution in the sense that all of its money comes from the public," he said. "That's just not true at all."

Only $3.25 billion of the university's total $19.6 billion operations funds were allocated to the university by the state, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission.

Scorza, who said he could not speak on behalf of the board, said the amendment will not solve many of the issues the regents have failed to address, including low worker's pay, ensuring student body diversity and expanding shared governance to students.

"I acknowledge the university's failure," he said. "(But the amendment) will create an additional level of bureaucracy, slowing down the nimbleness the UC system needs in order to respond to those concerns."

In order to go into effect, the amendment must be passed by two-thirds of the legislature and go before California voters for approval.

Tags: CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION, UC OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT