BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó




                   Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
                           Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair


          SB 1328 (DeLeon) - Postsecondary Education: Textbooks
          
          Amended: 04/18/2012             Policy Vote: Education 8-1
          Urgency: No                     Mandate: No
          Hearing Date: 04/30/2012        Consultant: Jacqueline 
          Wong-Hernandez
          
          This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File. 

          
          Bill Summary: SB 1328 requires a publisher that supplies 
          textbooks or other instructional material to a postsecondary 
          institution to provide specific information about that textbook 
          or material using a standard XML or comma-delimited format, or 
          both, and requires publishers to submit the data to the 
          Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching 
          (MERLOT) program.

          Fiscal Impact: 
              One-time CSU cost of approximately $250,000 to design and 
              establish a publisher submission process that implements the 
              bill's requirements.
              Annual costs of $300,000-$400,000 to provide ongoing 
              project management, support for cataloging and updating 
              data, and campus-based web services to continue the system.  


          Background:  The federal Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) 
          requires publishers (when providing information to faculty or 
          others who select course materials at an institution of higher 
          education receiving federal financial assistance) to include in 
          writings specific price and format information, as well as 
          details concerning previous editions of the text, including a 
          description of substantial content revisions.
          
          The College Textbook Transparency Act requires, beginning 
          January 1, 2010: 

          1)   Textbook publishers to print on the cover or within each 
               textbook a summary of the substantive content differences 
               between the new and prior editions, and the copyright date 
               of the previous edition.








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          2)   Each campus bookstore at any public college or university 
               to post in its store or on its website a disclosure of its 
               retail pricing policy on new and used textbooks. 

          3)   Each public college or university to encourage personnel 
               responsible for selecting course materials (typically 
               faculty) to place their orders with sufficient lead time to 
               enable the bookstore to confirm the availability of the 
               requested materials.  (Education Code § 66406.7)

          Proposed Law: This bill requires textbook publishers to provide 
          the following information about textbooks or materials using a 
          standard XML or comma-delimited format, or both, and requires 
          publishers to submit the data to the MERLOT program: (a) book 
          title; (b) author; (c) publisher; (d) ISBN; (e) retail price; 
          (f) edition; and (g) copyright date. It requires that the data 
          be made available for public use.

          Staff Comments: This bill requires textbook publishers to 
          provide the specific information listed previously to the MERLOT 
          program of CSU, and requires that the data be "available for 
          public review and use". This implies, but does not necessarily 
          require that the information be stored and displayed within 
          MERLOT.

          The CSU has opined that MERLOT is not the appropriate place for 
          this data. Should it be required to be stored in MERLOT, the 
          costs to the CSU would be higher than those identified in the 
          Fiscal Impact because the CSU would have to complete additional 
          programming and design work on MERLOT to accommodate this data. 

          If the CSU could determine how to best meet the data 
          requirements of the bill, it projects a one-time CSU cost of 
          approximately $250,000 to design a different system specific to 
          this bill, as well as $300,000-$400,000 to provide ongoing 
          project management and support, based on the likely 
          functionality needs of the new system. 














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