Jose Lumbreras, 25, has pleaded no contest on two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for the deaths of 22-year-old UC Berkeley graduate Milanca Lopez and her 6-year-old son, Xavier Chevez. The Alameda County District Attorney’s office is requesting the maximum 12 years in prison, according to Deputy District Attorney Teresa Drenick.

“It is a tremendous relief to know this particular chapter has come to a close without the trauma of what we knew would be a painful trial for her family and friends,” said Rue Mapp, a UC Berkeley graduate and neighbor of Lopez, in an email. “We will continue to celebrate Milanca and Xavier’s lives and remember the beautiful friend and mother she was in our community.”

Paul Wolf, Lumbreras’ defense attorney, disagrees with the prosecution’s pursuit of the maximum sentence. He said Lumbreras has suffered greatly from the accident and that 12 years is too severe for the crime.

“Jose has never denied nor sought to shirk his responsibility for the damage and pain for which he has shared and continues to experience,” Wolf said. “He loved both of them. It’s an accident, and he’s responsible for it.”

Wolf will argue for a lighter penalty during Lumbreras’ sentencing on June 11.

At approximately 1 a.m. on May 18, 2012, Lumbreras drove into a tree in central Berkeley, killing Lopez and seriously injuring Chevez. According to police, his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

Chevez was placed on life support and died from his injuries one week later at Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland.

Prior to her death, Lopez and her son lived in university student housing at University Village in Albany. Lopez began studying at UC Berkeley in 2007 and was planning to begin a master’s program for teaching at UCLA following her graduation.

Lumbreras came to UC Berkeley in 2010 after receiving a degree in sociology from UC Santa Barbara. He received a graduate degree from UC Berkeley’s ethnic studies department not long before the accident.

The couple was allegedly drinking in celebration of their recent graduations prior to the collision, Wolf said.

Lumbreras is currently being held at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, and his bail is set at $200,000, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office inmate locator.

“It’s one of the most tragic cases I’ve ever been involved in, and I’ve been a criminal defense lawyer for 37 years,” Wolf said. “It caused nearly intolerable injury and loss to three people and their respective families.”

Andy Nguyen is the lead crime reporter. Contact him at anguyen@dailycal.org
and follow him on Twitter @Andy_Truc.

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The governor’s May budget revision, released Tuesday, remains largely unchanged from the January proposal. Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, said the university did not receive any additional increases in funding in the May revision.

The budget also calls for a four-year tuition freeze for all students except those in professional schools, a restructuring of debt and discontinuation of a proposed unit cap on state-subsidized courses, which could have affected 2,200 UC students in the next school year.

Student Regent Jonathan Stein and Regent Bonnie Reiss raised concerns about rising costs of professional student fees while undergraduate and other program costs have been held constant.

“Because Prop. 30 passed and because of new state revenues, we’ve been able to hold tuition constant,” Stein said. “In reality, we’ve been able to hold undergraduate and Ph.D tuition constant while professional schools continue to rise.”

The regents also discussed restructuring the university’s debt. The state of California currently takes out bonds on behalf of the university, but UC officials say shifting the responsibility of the debt to the UC system would help lower the debt.

“That debt is greater because the state of California’s credit rating is not as good as ours,” said Brooke Converse, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President. “What we’re asking is that the state of California let us take over and restructure that debt, because if we restructure it, we’ll be able to save $80 million a year.”

The university is also working with the governor to expand facilities at UC Merced, said Nathan Brostrom, the university’s executive vice president for business operations.

“The highest priority is a classroom and academic building at UC Merced,” Brostrom said. “They are now close to 6,000 students, and they do not have space for continued growth unless they get more classroom buildings.”

The regents also approved a plan to build a new aquatics center at UC Berkeley on the current site of the Tang Center parking lot.

Protesters from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299, a union representing patient-care workers at UC medical centers, also interrupted early in the meeting for about 45 minutes to protest in favor of higher pay and increased staffing.

On Thursday, the regents will meet in closed sessions to discuss collective bargaining matters and lawsuits related to the UC system.

Staff writer Virgie Hoban contributed to this report. 

Mitchell Handler covers academics and administration. Contact him at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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If approved, the restraining order would prohibit the two-day strike planned by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 3299. According to a statement released by the UC Office of the President on Friday, strikes that pose an imminent threat to public health and safety are illegal under state law, and the university believes the strike would improperly withhold health care from the public.

Dianne Klein, a UC spokesperson, said that if the union cared about patient safety, it would not endanger patients by striking.

“This (strike) is one of their tactics to get what they want, which is a special deal for their workers,” Klein said. “That is not only unfair but fiscally irresponsible.”

The strike comes amid ongoing contract negotiations that began in June 2012. The university proposed a pension reform that would increase contributions toward pension benefits from both the university and employees, but AFSCME 3299 rejected these reforms, arguing that the university is prioritizing pensions over patient care.

According to Todd Stenhouse, spokesperson for AFSCME 3299, the university is prioritizing executive pension benefits instead of adequate patient care and staffing.
“We are seeing the university cut corners in ways that are so dangerous for patients,” said Kathryn Lybarger, president of AFSCME 3299.

AFSCME 3299 has established a Patient Protection Task Force to care for patients during the strike, but that it is something in which the university refuses to participate, according to Stenhouse.

During pension reform negotiations, AFSCME 3299 asked for caps on executive pension benefits, which the university would not discuss, according to Lybarger.

“Right now, these executives are going to retire on upwards of $300,000,” Lybarger said. “That’s a lot of money to live on for doing nothing.”

The university filed a similar restraining order in July 2008 in response to a planned AFSCME 3299 strike. The court approved the restraining order, but the union went ahead with the strike.

“If the court says you are prohibited from striking and they go ahead and do it anyway, they are breaking the law,” Klein said. “We hope there is not a strike. We are prepared for one.”

University Professional and Technical Employees, another UC medical workers union, also held a demonstration Wednesday at the five UC medical centers.

AFSCME 3299 also held a sit-down protest at Wednesday’s UC Board of Regents meeting in Sacramento, resulting in the arrest of 13 demonstrators.

“We are in this fight to win real patient protection,” Lybarger said. “It’s not an option to emerge from this fight without having won real gains for our patients.”

Contact Tara Hurley at thurley@dailycal.org.

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The decision on Jackson v. Landgraf to overturn the health and wellness referendum was founded in the argument that ASUC President Connor Landgraf overstepped his presidential authority by using an executive order to get the referendum on the spring 2013 election ballot after the established filing date.

Associate Justice Scott Lara expressed concern that students only had 18 days to become properly informed about a referendum that would initially cost each student $40 per semester, a cost that would rise until reaching a maximum $287 per semester from 2042-46. The ASUC bylaws state that the president may only issue executive orders that are “necessary to maintain the functioning of the ASUC until the Senate can meet again.”

The justices believed that the circumstances surrounding the referendum did not require an immediate solution.

“Problems that only deal with the comfort of the student body, such as a larger area to work out or newer machines, cannot be an urgent problem that the Executive Order can be used to solve,” reads the decision.

Only five of the nine Judicial Council justices participated in the decision. Chief Justice Suneeta Israni was not involved. No member of the Judicial Council could be reached for comment on this story.

The constitutionality of another executive order that Landgraf issued to ensure students’ continued unlimited access to AC Transit bus passes — the Class Pass —  was not challenged.

Attorney General Hinh Tran, who represented the ASUC in the case and defended the referendum’s constitutionality, took issue with the procedures of the case. He said that the decision was made in summary judgment — a tactic usually reserved for the necessity of expediency — which allows the justices to make a private decision without hearing oral argument. Additionally, Tran said that the decision was made public only one minute before the deadline for an appeal.

“(The Judicial Council’s opinion) does not address the arguments I made in the trial briefs,” Tran said.

Student Action Senator Mihir Deo, who played a major role in including language in the referendum that would serve the needs of disabled students, concurred that the executive order was unconstitutional but said that the council did not consider external factors that caused Landgraf to miss the filing deadline.

“I feel that this is one of those situations where you withhold something unconstitutional, but you’re also withholding democracy a little bit as well,” Deo said.

The health and wellness referendum has already been placed on the 2014 ballot, giving students close to a year to weigh the benefits of new facilities against the fee increases that would pay for them.

Contact Jeremy Gordon at jgordon@dailycal.org.

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The $15 million facility, to be named the California Aquatics Center, will replace the parking lot adjacent to the Tang Center on Bancroft Way. Despite some concerns that the center will serve only a small number of students and remove valuable parking services, the campus plans to begin construction in August. The project is to be funded entirely by Cal Aquatic Legends, a nonprofit donor group founded to raise money for the facility.

The center is in part a response to limited recreational space on campus. Spieker Aquatics Complex, UC Berkeley’s only aquatic center, struggles to serve both competitive athletes and recreational swimmers despite being open from early morning to late at night most days, according to a UC Office of the President executive summary.

“By building this pool, we relieve some of the use that Spieker Pool currently has, allowing us to open it up to students more of the time,” said Edward Denton, vice chancellor of facilities services, at the meeting.

According to Denton, the campus was planning to use the parking lot to develop administrative buildings but changed plans when donors offered to finance a new aquatic facility.

Despite the project’s private funding source, some are concerned that the new aquatic center will allocate UC resources to only a small number of students.

“It’s probably true that better facilities and resources aid performance,” said Celeste Langan, an associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, in an op-ed for The Daily Californian in April. “But shouldn’t we be applying that principle first to the 99 percent of Berkeley students who are not intercollegiate athletes, and to the object of academic performance?”

Regent George Kieffer also said the university should be wary of pursuing projects simply because private donors offer money.

“I think this is a good project, but I think that we should be careful about simply (pursuing projects where) because someone gives a gift, that’s the direction we go in,” Kieffer said.

The aquatic facility is set to finish construction by July 2014, according to a UC Office of the President executive summary. Following approval from the regents, the campus will begin refining the facility’s design, said Christine Shaff, director of communications for the campus’s Facilities Services department.

Once constructed, the aquatics facility will be home to some of UC Berkeley’s most elite athletes.

“One of the people who is going to swim in this pool is Missy Franklin,” said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at the meeting. “This facility will be a crown jewel in her ability to train.”

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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The results come from the systemwide 2012 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, with questions on academic engagement, community involvement and financial background.

According to the survey results, 82 percent of UC students responding said they were content with their overall education. Despite more than $900 million in state funding cuts to the university over the last five years, this percentage has remained relatively constant since 2006.

“I think that shows that despite the economic recession and the decreased funding to UC in recent years, we’ve been able to continue serving our students really well,” said Shelly Meron, spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, in an email.

But while academic approval has remained relatively constant, students are increasingly unhappy with the cost of getting a degree. The survey found that student satisfaction with the value of a UC education is now at 60 percent, down from 71 percent in 2006. The percent of students worried about the cost of tuition has increased from 64 to 71 percent over the last two years alone.

“Obviously we’re concerned about tuition increases, and we’re continuing to work with state legislators and the governor to resolve UC’s funding issues,” Meron said in the email.

Sereeta Alexander, research analyst at the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis, said that the campus’s own survey of new students has found similar results — that students are concerned about financing their education in the next few years.

“(The results) show that we should be thinking about how we should support students more with financial aid and scholarships — even if tuition and fees are rising,” Alexander said.

CalSERVE Senator and Executive Vice President-elect Nolan Pack said that higher student costs may reduce campus involvement, another issue studied in the survey.

“The more a college education costs, the more students have to work while they’re in school and the less time they have to do other things like public service or civic engagement,” Pack said. “The more we increase tuition, the more we’re chipping away at the holistic college experience.”

Pack also criticized possible plans to make tuition more affordable through online education, pointing out that the high academic satisfaction rates show that students value a classroom education.

“It’s clear that the quality of a UC education remains very high, but the state’s continued divestment from higher education puts that at risk,” Pack said. “The fact that students are overwhelmingly satisfied with faculty and instruction should say something. Online education … contradicts the experience of being in the classroom.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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The revised budget, commonly known as the May revision, reflects new spending proposals from state legislators, changes in the state’s economic outlook and decreases in federal government funding since the governor’s first proposed budget in January.

The UC Board of Regents will discuss the revised budget at its meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday.

If approved by the Legislature, the governor’s budget will increase funding for each of the state’s higher education systems above the prior year’s funding. The university will receive an increase of up to 20 percent in General Fund appropriations — about $511 million — over the next four years.

According to the budget, these changes will represent an increase of about 10 percent in total operating funds, including tuition and fee revenues.

The budget includes about $25.4 billion in total funding for higher education in the coming fiscal year, $400 million less than was proposed in January.

In addition, a previously proposed unit cap has also been removed from the budget following rejection from the state Legislature. Faculty groups and lawmakers criticized the 150 percent unit cap on state-subsidized courses for its “one-size-fits-all” model and argued that the mandate would not be as effective as individual campus caps.

According to the UC Office of the President, the unit cap would have impacted 2,200 UC students in the 2013-14 academic year.

“UC will continue working with the governor and the Legislature to address critical funding needs,” said Patrick Lenz, the university’s vice president for budget and capital resources, in a statement.

According to the governor’s press release, the budget is expected to remain balanced in the coming years. Spending cuts enacted over the past two years and new temporary funds brought in by Proposition 30, which was passed by voters last November, are expected to allow the state budget to reduce the state’s debt to $4.7 billion by 2017 — a reduction of more than 86 percent.

“This budget builds a solid foundation for California’s future by investing in our schools, continuing to pay down our debts and establishing a prudent reserve,” Brown said in a press release. “But California’s fiscal stability will be short-lived unless we continue to exercise the discipline that got us out of the mess we inherited.”

Additional elements of the revised budget include changes to the state’s public school funding system, investment in job-creation programs and an additional $72 million for county probation departments to compensate for their increased responsibilities as legislatures try to reduce the state’s prison population.

Brown will now have to convince the state Legislature that his plans for higher education and the state merit passage. After discussion from state senators and assembly members, the budget will be finalized in June and take effect July 1, the start of the 2013-14 fiscal year.

Alex Berryhill covers higher education. Contact her at aberryhill@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @berryhill93.

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Devonte Jackson, campus organizing director for the external affairs vice president’s office, filed the petition against Landgraf on May 1, claiming that Landgraf missed a constitutionally mandated deadline for issuing the executive order that placed the referendum on the ballot. The council ruled in Jackson’s favor, saying that Landgraf’s use of an executive order was “neither urgent nor necessary to the functioning of the ASUC,” according to the Judicial Council’s summary brief.

“We believe it goes against the spirit of the ASUC Constitution to allow the decision of one student place a fee referendum on the ballot when the Constitution and Bylaws have explicitly set out deadlines that were missed,” according to the brief.

According to the text of the ASUC Constitution, the president is vested with the authority  “To direct by Executive Order the taking of actions which are urgent and necessary to maintain the functioning of the A. S.U.C. until the Senate can again meet.”

More updates to follow.