Turlock Journal - University students have mixed opinions on AB 656

Turlock Journal - University students have mixed opinions on AB 656:

"When a state assemblyman proposes a bill that could mean more than $1.5 billion a year to higher education, students at cash-strapped universities sit up and listen.

About 30 California State University, Stanislaus students from majors as diverse as Biology, Nursing, Criminal Justice, and Jazz Trombone gathered on a misty Friday evening for an open forum to discuss Assembly Bill 656. Student group Socialist Organizer, which has helped to organize some of the recent CSU Stanislaus protests, sponsored the meeting."


Melina Juarez, a political science and anthropology student affiliated with Socialist Organizer, presented information about the bill, which would impose a 12.5 percent producer paid tax on all oil and gas, at the point it is extracted from the state. Oil and gas companies would be prohibited from passing the cost of the tax on to consumers. California, the third-largest oil producer in the country, is the only state in the nation without an oil severance tax.

Money raised through the tax would be used solely to fund higher education classroom instruction. As currently written, 50 percent of revenues would go to the CSU system, 25 percent would go to the University of California, and 25 percent would go to community colleges.

Funding would be used to establish the California Higher Education Endowment Corporation, which would annually allocate the moneys in the California Higher Education Fund, which would also be created by the bill. A 15-member oversight board would govern the CHEEC.