BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2214
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Date of Hearing: April 27, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Lorena Gonzalez, Chair
AB
2214 (Harper) - As Amended March 28, 2016
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|Policy |Higher Education |Vote:|11 - 2 |
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: YesReimbursable:
Yes
SUMMARY:
This bill requires disclosure of royalties received by faculty
for books and other published materials. Specifically, this
bill:
1)Requires the California State University (CSU) Trustees and
the governing board of each California Community College (CCC)
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district, and requests the University of California (UC)
Regents, to require every faculty member to annually disclose,
under penalty of perjury, all income he or she received in the
prior calendar year from a publisher, periodical, or provider
of online content for royalties, advances, consulting
services, or for any other purpose.
2)Requires the information provided per (1) to be made available
on each institution's website for as long as each faculty
member is employed as a teacher at that institution.
3)Authorizes the respective government boards to assess a $50
fine for noncompliance with (1) by any faculty member, with
the funds derived from such fines to be available for general
educational purposes at the respective campuses.
FISCAL EFFECT:
Significant costs at all three segments. One-time costs, to
develop a form and process for obtaining the required
information and associated information technology (IT) start-up
costs, will be at least a few hundred thousand dollars at each
segment. Ongoing costs to manage the disclosure process,
including incidents of noncompliance, and provide ongoing IT
support would be several hundred thousand dollars at each
segment. Due to the potential for perjury, there could be
additional costs associated with investigation and litigation.
The above cost would be offset to a relatively small extent by
fine revenue from noncompliance.
COMMENTS:
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1)Purpose. According to the author, "Many professors require
students to buy the book they author, whether or not it is the
more cost efficient or most to-date version." The author
contends that, "Students deserve to have more transparency
within the school system to ensure that costs are as low as
possible."
Additionally, the author argues that, depending on longevity
and previous sales numbers, authors usually receive around 11%
to 15% of a book's sales; for a book that costs $185, the
author would make roughly $25 per copy sold and for a class of
30 students a professor could potentially earn $750 per class
and for a larger class size of 125 students, a professor could
make $3,125 per class.
This measure requires the CSU and CCC, and requests the UC, to
have their faculty members annually disclose all of their
income received, in the preceding year, from royalties,
advances and consulting services; and, published said
information on the institution's Internet Web sites.
2)Comment. Since the information to be obtained by any faculty
member is not specific to royalties received from their
authored work used solely at the institution where they teach
or for courses that they teach at that institution, it is
unclear how the information to be collected would provide
useful transparency as a means of ensuring, as the author
states, "that [textbook] costs are as low as possible."
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Analysis Prepared by:Chuck Nicol / APPR. / (916)
319-2081