SB 1283 ( Polanco) would have established a facility modernization allocation for community college facilities similar to that provided for K-12 school districts by SB 50 (Greene) of last year.

The modernization program has been a part of the K-12 facility program for several decades, and provides 25 percent of the replacement cost of a school facility to permit rehabilitation of existing facilities. Proposition 1A provides $700 million for this purpose in 1998-2000 and $1.2 billion in 2000-02. As the funding allocation shows the problems of deteriorating facilities is viewed as an expanding need in the K-12 bond allocation. A similar program for the community colleges would likely demonstrate a similar pattern of growing need, and provide a case for expanding the 1/3 allocation of higher education bonds for community colleges. CCFC supported this measure.

SB 1203 (Poochigian) would have provided a mechanism for joint use projects between K-12 and community college districts and permitted interim funding for either the K-12 or community college portion, or both. This measure received no "NO" votes through the entire legislative process, but was summarily held in the Assembly Appropriations Committee by fiat.

Both measures are theoretically still "alive" as 2-year bills. It's theoretical since measures that are held on the suspense file of an appropriations committee rarely see the light of day in the subsequent legislative session. There is no procedural reason why the bills can't move — they just rarely do. Authors are generally reluctant to introduce similar new measures in the second year of a legislative session, when they are facing a similar fate. Moving a bill through the legislative process is difficult and time consuming. We will continue to work with the authors to spring the bills loose.