Sacramento State is likely to see fee increases, higher student-to-faculty ratios and slowed student services once the Board of Trustees charts the course for the California State University system in the wake of Gov. Gray Davis? call for a new round of budget cuts.

According to Jon Self, Sac State?s associate vice president of finance, students will probably have to ante up more money for the spring semester, though he is not sure how much that will be.

“Based on my observations and my years of experience with this sort of thing, I?ll bet that a fee increase is coming,” said Self, who has been at Sac State for 25 years.

But the Capital Campus is in better shape than some other schools in the system.

Sac State?s administrators started tightening their belts last year by slowing down administrative hiring and shifting money into savings for anticipated expenses.

“We knew that (employee) health insurance costs were going to explode, so we set aside funds to deal with it,” Self said. “Not every school did that.”

Jim Chopyak, president of the Sacramento chapter of the California Faculty Association agreed that Sac State prepared for the budget crunch, but called for more openness in how budget decisions are reached.

“They appear to have done a good job getting ready for (the budget cuts),” Chopyak said Monday. “Now they need to take a more holistic approach to the budget and be more open.

“And faculty and students need to watch this very carefully to make sure that any cuts don?t hurt instruction.”

If, as Self suspects, the Board of Trustees next week decides to raise fees for the spring semester, Sac State would mail out thousands of bills for the extra payments.

Students who failed to pay up would not have access to their grades and could face being removed from university rolls.

“If there is a fee increase, we will bill and follow our normal collection process. If the students don?t pay, they will be disenrolled,” Self said, noting that the university sends letters and makes phone calls to students who are slow to pay before making that final move.

The CSU has not raised fees since 1992, when, with California in the throes of a similar budget crunch, it issued a mid-year tuition hike.

Campus disenrollments rose that year.

“We have to remove people for non-payment every year,” Self said. “But that year the percentage was higher. Not a whole lot, but it was noticeable.”

Students interviewed by the Hornet on Monday had plenty of questions and some expressed anger at what they see as poor planning by administrators and elected officials.

“How can something like this happen?” asked freshman Reece Hodges as she sipped coffee in the University Union. “You can?t tell me that no one knew there was going to be a problem. Nobody wanted to admit it.”

Mike Peterson, a senior said he thinks election year politics made a bad situation worse.

“I know that money is tight in the state, but the legislature and the governor should have dealt with it before we came to school, but they were more worried about getting elected. Billing students is dumb. I bet a lot of people won?t pay it.”

And D?Andre Jones, sophomore biology thinks students are likely to suffer.

“We?ve got too many people and not enough money. And when they start talking about cutting money, what they?re really talking about is cutting out students. We?re going to pay more and get less.”