A $12 billion UC-sponsored bond that would fill funding gaps for university researchers will not appear on the November ballot after failing to meet the qualifying deadline.<\/p>\n
Senate Bill 895, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, was cosponsored by UC and the UAW 4811, which represents 60,000 academic student employees, amid rollbacks in federal funding for UC researchers.<\/p>\n
Since early 2025, President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has suspended more than $3 billion in research grants from leading science agencies that did not align with its political priorities. In April, the administration cut an additional $21 million in National Science Foundation grants to UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n
After passing through the Senate, the bill failed to pass through the assembly before the June 25 deadline to appear on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlacing a bond on the ballot is always an ambitious undertaking \u2014 particularly so in California\u2019s current fiscal environment. State budget challenges, competing priorities, and a limited ability by the state to borrow money shaped the outcome of the bill,\u201d said UC President James Milliken in a press release.<\/p>\n
The bond would have established the California Foundation for Science and Health Research, which would award grants to universities and research companies. In addition to supporting universities, Weiner also intended for SB 895 to make healthcare more affordable by permitting the state to publicly produce pharmaceuticals invented by bond-funded research.<\/p>\n
Milliken, alongside a coalition of scientists and leaders, rallied around the bill, dubbing it the \u201cSave Science, Save Lives\u201d ballot measure. Last November \u2014 after the Trump administration froze almost $600 million in grants to UCLA and demanded an additional $1 billion in fines \u2014 Milliken wrote to Wiener, asking state legislators for $4-5 billion annually to mitigate lost federal funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the face of MAGA\u2019s senseless destruction of our federal science agencies and cuts to scientific research, California must stand up and defend the research that powers our state,\u201d Wiener said in a press release. \u201cScience is how we heal the sick, feed the hungry, and build the future \u2014 and nowhere does it better than California.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiener also touted the bill as an economic investment, as every dollar invested in National Institute of Health research generates $2.50 in economic activity.<\/p>\n
The bond could still qualify for the November ballot measure if granted an extension by the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope that our representatives will find a way to expedite the bond\u2019s progress out of suspense,\u201d said Julia Falo Sanjuan, a UC Berkeley postdoc and recording secretary for UAW 4811, in a statement to The Daily Californian. \u201cTens of thousands of people, both members of our union and members of the broader UC community, have come together to save science in this state\u2014no matter what happens to SB 895 this summer, that coalition will continue fighting to protect research in the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A $12 billion UC-sponsored bond that would fill funding gaps for university researchers will not appear on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[33861,156997,136085,23188,143,145,144,1621,1695,15178,5247],"class_list":["post-389504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-james-b-milliken","tag-julia-falo-sanjuan","tag-national-institute-of-health","tag-national-science-foundation","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-scott-wiener","tag-trump-administration","tag-uaw-4811","tag-uc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}