The UC administration late last week announced a delay in the resumption of employee contributions to the UC Retirement Plan. The contributions had been scheduled to begin July 1, ending a contribution "holiday" of more than 15 years.

The UC system plans to kick in a percentage, and, to cover this cost, had asked for $60 million in the 2007-08 state budget. Gov. Schwarzenegger excluded the money from his original spending plan in January, and he did not include the money in his budget revision that came out May 14.

The revision came out the day before a meeting of the UC Board of Regents. At the end of the regents' meeting, the Office of the President issued this statement on retirement contributions: "Because UC will not receive state support for this purpose in its 2007-08 budget, the restart of UCRP contributions will need to be rescheduled."

The statement added that "the new date for restarting contributions is unknown at present."

It continued: "University leaders will continue to discuss this issue with state officials over the coming months, and employees can expect more information about this soon."

Though Schwarzenegger excluded UC's request for retirement money in his budget, he agreed to propose trailer legislation declaring that the state intends to fully fund its share of the cost for employer contributions to the UC Retirement Plan in future years.

During the contribution "holiday," the plan has been living off its investments.

But for more than a year, UC officials have been saying that the plan is in jeopardy of falling below the 100 percent funding level — meaning that the balance would not be enough to pay all obligations. So last year, the Board of Regents ordered renewed contributions, to be phased in until UC and retirement plan members were contributing a combined 16 percent of covered wages.

The split has not been officially determined. However, UC officials in their May 17 statement declared that the regents' "long-term approach" is a formula consistent with how the state pays into the California Public Employees' Retirement System. So, based on the UC Retirement Plan's "current projected total ongoing cost" of 16 percent of payroll, UC would pay 11 percent and employees 5 percent, according to the statement.

For represented employees, according to the statement, the restart of contributions will be subject to the collective bargaining process.

The May 17 statement also declared: "The regents are committed to maintaining a healthy pension plan in order to ensure UC's ability to pay retirement benefits, and to also avoid the funding problems that many other pension plans are having."