State budget woes leave college head exposed to crities. (Up Front).

Piedad Robertson, the president of Santa Monica College, is learning the hard way how budget cuts in Sacramento can expose long-simmering troubles at home.

Robertson, a former Massachusetts education secretary, finds herself in a tumultuous battle with faculty and staff that threatens to leave the 74-year-old community college without a budget -- and could lead to her ouster.

The trigger in the dispute, which led to a no confidence vote by faculty and staff last week, is anticipated budget cutbacks due to the state's fiscal crisis. But the issue has brought out deeper divisions, involving campus politics, union work rules and Robertson's own management style.

Gov. Gray Davis' initial proposal in January would have shaved 10 percent off the budgets of the state's 108 community colleges, which serve nearly 3 million California students.

Preparing for the worst, Robertson identified cuts ranging from 13 percent to 20 percent and targeted an area held sacred in academia -- tenured faculty.

The college eliminated six vocational programs, from architecture to automotive repair, displacing 2,000 students and firing eight full-time faculty with tenure, effective this fall.

The no confidence vote mirrored the one taken years ago by community college faculty in Massachusetts, where Robertson was responsible for implementing budget cuts under then-Gov. Michael Dukakis.

Shrugging it off as a backlash, Robertson said she is trapped by state regulations that require admmistrators to meet early deadlines for budget cuts.

"How can anybody who can read and do math look at a budget that has a deficit of $9 million and come to a conclusion that you don't have to cut personnel?" she said last week.

And therein lies the rub.

Scott Lay, a lobbyist for the Community College League of California, which represents local college presidents and trustees, said he believes Davis' revised budget in March will require only a 1.7 percent cut for local districts.

As the budget process grinds slowly in Sacramento, community colleges throughout the state are revising their own proposals to reflect last-minute changes. In all, roughly 2 percent of the annual budgets at community colleges, or $250 million, would be slashed from the state's $4.9 billion budget, under Davis' proposal.

The 50 percent law

The budget battle has thrown into the open a conflict that's been simmering at Santa Monica College since Robertson was hired in 1995 over the objections of the faculty.

The acrimony first surfaced in 1998, when the Faculty Association, the union representing 340 faculty members, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging the administration was out of compliance with the so-called "50 percent law," enacted in 1961. The law requires that community colleges spend half their budgets on classroom instruction, including teachers' salaries and benefits.

A truce was reached in a 1999 collective bargaining agreement that prohibits the college from cutting salaries, benefits and a slew of other items. Under the three-year contract, the union agreed not to seek enforcement of the 50 percent law.

This time, though, administrators are adamant that the faculty make concessions.

Lantz Simpson, the union president, claims the administration went out of its way to eliminate entire programs in an effort to fire tenured faculty.

"The administration just wants to roll back the collective bargaining agreement and they're trying to use the guise of budget cuts to do that," said Simpson.

Robertson has never been noted for her touch with the rank and file.

"Piedad and the administration have what is called a Soviet style of negotiating," said Phil Hendricks, president of California School Employees Association Chapter 36, which rep- resents 440 staff members. "They sit there forever until they have negotiated you out of Eastern Europe, or in our case, Santa Monica."

Since 1995, Robertson is credited with a nearly 40 percent jump in the school's enrollment to 32,000 students, and she has hired 160 full-time faculty.

She has also made use of a $160 million bond measure to rebuild the campus, adding a new library and science building. There are also plans for a new theatre with a massive fundraising drive underway, though Robertson says fund-raising for operations is off-limits.

Robertson admits she is a survivor. A native of Cuba jailed briefly under former President Fulgencio Batista and was a founding member of the pro-Fidel Castro "26th of July" movement, she learned politics early in life.

"We were told we were not open-minded enough, that we had to include everybody, including the people who betrayed us," she said, referring to Batista and his supporters. "I have learned, you work on principle, you stand on principle and you do what is right as whatever cost." Piedad Robertson

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Santa Monica College president under fire, again.

Title: President, Superintendent

Organization: Santa Monica College

Born: Cuba, age not disclosed

Education: B.A., MA., University of Miami 

Salary: $178,800

Previous Jobs: Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education, 1991-1995; President, Bunker Hill Community College, Boston, 1988-1991; Miami Dade Community College district.

Personal: Married with five children.