University Budgets

After reading the editorial “Now You Have It, Now You Don’t” (Oct. 20), I wonder if the state is trying to bankrupt the university system. Yes, the tax on periodicals is small when the average person buys them but in the quantity and amount a university must purchase periodicals those few pennies add up fast.

The universities don’t have the extra money. Their funding has been cut so dramatically that classes have been canceled, library hours shortened and workers have been laid off at all levels. All of these add up to an inferior education; now the new taxes hit with an extra charge in the universities’ already tight budget. It is time that the people of the state, not just the student population, speak out; we all must ask ourselves is an inferior university system the price we must pay for the elusive balanced budget?

ELIZABETH M. RICHER, Glendale