The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) California’s economic and social prosperity relies on a higher education system that keeps pace with California’s growth. In the coming decades, the state’s economic prosperity will depend on increasing the productivity of the work force and on the ability to compete successfully in the world marketplace.

(b) The system of public higher education in this state includes the University of California, the Hastings College of the Law, the California State University, the California Community Colleges, and their respective off-campus centers. Each of these institutions plays a vital role in maintaining California’s dominance in higher education in the United States.

(c) Over the last several years, studies have been completed by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, the University of California, the California State University, and the California Community Colleges to assess their long-term and short-term capital needs. Those studies demonstrate that the long-term and short-term needs total, in the aggregate, seven hundred fifty million dollars ($750,000,000) per year into the next century.

(d) Proceeds from the sale of bonds issued and sold pursuant to this chapter may be used to fund construction on existing or new campuses and off-campus centers, including the construction of buildings and the acquisition of related fixtures, the renovation and reconstruction of facilities, site acquisition, the equipping of new, renovated, or reconstructed facilities, which equipment shall have an average useful life of 10 years; and to provide funds for the payment of preconstruction costs, including, but not limited to, preliminary plans and working drawings at the University of California, the Hastings College of the Law, the California State University and the California Community Colleges.

(e) The purposes of this article include assisting in meeting the capital outlay financing needs of California’s public higher education system.

(Added by Stats. 1998, Ch. 407, Sec. 16. Approved in Proposition 1A at the November 3, 1998, election.)