Assemblyman talks oil at OCC

A California assemblyman who wants to levy a tax on the state’s oil drillers appeared Thursday at Orange Coast College, pitching his bill to a group of student senators and pointing out that California pays $2 billion more a year on prisons than higher education.

The Assembly’s majority leader, Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont), urged the senators to take part in the campaign to raise fees on California’s oil industry, a move that could raise as much as $2 billion a year, nearly a half-million of which would be earmarked for community colleges statewide.

“Alaska has raised $400 million a year by doing the same, and all that money went to higher education,” said Torrico, whose district includes the East Bay area. “Every other state in the country charges some sort of fee for drilling. Why shouldn’t we?”

Torrico, in a 90-minute sit-down with nearly a dozen student senators, painted a grim picture of Sacramento’s fiscal woes and the future of higher education, saying that if something isn’t done in the next two years, 20,000 to 50,000 students will be turned away from the UC or Cal State systems because of budget cuts.

Ultimately, he added, community colleges will bear the brunt of the rejected students, something of a challenge in and of itself, considering that junior colleges are struggling financially as well.

Normally, the hardest-hit population during the recession, he said, is the middle class because they make too much money to qualify for financial aid and not enough to pay their way through college.

However, Torrico’s Assembly Bill 656, which would levy a 12.5% tax yearly on the state’s oil drillers, could help shore up some of the financial woes at the higher education level and put money back into coffers where it belongs, he said.

Besides, he said, California, with nearly 37 million people, deserves more.

“More money is going to mean more classes, more financial aid, but it’s not going to solve everything,” Torrico said. “But when you have a system where the prison system is getting more money than the higher education system, you’ve got some serious problems.”

The bill, if approved, is expected to become a part of the state’s overall budget package by the spring or early summer, Torrico said. For now, however, he needs 100,000 signatures to show the state Legislature that the oil tax movement has “grass roots” support, which it needs before it can stand a chance of passing through both the state Assembly and Senate.

Torrico has collected 50,000 signatures since his campaign began in November.

Orange Coast College was the 50th campus that Torrico has visited, personally meeting with student senators and campus officials.

“I welcome a bill like this, personally,” Jamey Briddle, the student Senate’s president, said after Torrico spoke and a round table discussion followed. “I’ll go bankrupt before I quit school.”

Although Briddle receives financial aid, he said most, if not all of the money, goes to living expenses, not education expenses — a common lament among many full-time students who don’t have a job.

Most of the student senators said they planned on becoming a part of the movement.

A march will be held March 22 in Sacramento to support the bill, and Torrico is encouraging students to get together and support it.

Mohammad Ali, a Huntington Beach resident and OCC student, said he thought the oil tax was a great idea. Ideally, he said, it would be nice for the oil revenues to trickle down to the community college level and beyond.

“Let’s face it, getting a B.A. degree is like getting a high school diploma these days,” he said. “You have to have one. There is no other options. And community college is the place to start.”