The Board Cuts its Own Pay, By Phillip Yarbrough

Finally the California Legislature is going to cut spending. Unfortunately, due to their lack of leadership, it took the insolvency of our State to get them to finally do it. After years of overspending to cede to the demands of California’s labor unions, to continue the benefits to a bloated social network, and to pay for dubious pet projects, we are cutting state spending.

As an elected office holder at Rancho Santiago Community College District, I am responsible for Santiago Canyon and Santa Ana Colleges, as well as five other major learning campuses. Over two years ago I warned of the pending financial crises and the likelihood that the Legislature would completely mismanage it and leave us with to deal with the results of their incompetence. At that time we instituted a hiring freeze and asked department managers to make cuts in order to build large cash reserve. We worked with all of our local labor unions and they joined our effort to economize and conserve.

With these efforts we were able to cut $5 million from our 2008 budget, avoided laying off any of our full time professors and taught still more students. We repeated this in the 2009 budget and eliminated an additional $16 million in spending, kept our full time staff and increased enrollment again. We are now teaching more students even though we cut over $32 million in spending over the past two years, literally doing more with less.

But now the Sacramento fiscal charade is over. I have done everything I could as an elected official to deliver more with less, but Sacramento reprehensible mismanagement has lead us to even steeper budget cuts. We are now forced to make an additional $12 to $19 million in cuts, and this will deplete the large cash reserve we built up.

While we are exploring several different options to maintain the number and variety of courses our colleges are offering and to retain our full time professors and department heads, the budget cuts are now so sever that even a financially responsible and stable college district like Rancho Santiago must now consider lay offs and pay cuts. There are other options that we are exploring with our local employee unions which cannot be divulged, but we must also consider lay offs and pay cuts.

Just as Christ showed us, I believe that the best leadership leads by example. Therefore I joined fellow Trustee John Hanna in an effort to cut the salary of all Rancho Santiago Trustees by 10% before we ask our employees to do the same. This was passed unanimously at our May 26th board meeting.

While this self-imposed pay cut was unusual by Sacramento standards, it happened without the partisanship and acrimony that is pervasive at the state capital. First John Hanna is the former Chair of the Orange County Democrat Party and I am a former Republican Party Central Committee Member, but we often collaborate on policy. Additionally the political membership of our board is similar to our State Assembly and Senate: 57% Democrat, 29% Republican and 14% independent. Yet we have learned to put aside ideology and seek commonality in our mission to educate. I don’t see my Democrat colleagues as the epitome of their party ideology. Of course I don’t agree with some of their views, but I don’t allow this to convolute the views on education that we do share. Conversely, they know me as a conservative and a Republican, but they see through an ideological fog to where we can agree and lead together for the benefit of our community.

Also we see that self interest and self enrichment is not the primary motivator. Again our educational mission statement guides our decisions. This led our decision to lead by example and cut our pay first before we ask our employees to do the same.

The budget cuts that the State Legislature has now been forced to make are now being made on the local level. Rancho Santiago Community College employees have bore the burnt of Sacramento’s mismanagement of our state finances, but they will not bear it alone. I intend to keep working with our unions and my fellow board members in a bipartisan way. I believe that we will emerge from this crisis and continue our mission to offer the college courses needed to improve the lives of Orange Countians.

Phillip Yarbrough
Trustee
Rancho Santiago Community College District
Member of the Education Alliance Board of Directors

Mr. Yarbrough is a former Professor of Economics at Santa Ana and Santiago Canyon Colleges and the President of Nations Financial. He is also serves as a Trustee at Rancho Santiago Community College. He can be reached at 714-532-8175 x100