Guard duty

THE CALIFORNIA National Guard claims to be the busiest in the country, which is easy to believe, given the state’s size and vulnerability to disasters. At the same time, it’s the smallest force relative to the population it protects -- only 20,000 soldiers, or one for every 1,900 Californians. And that number is shrinking because of recruitment and retention troubles.

Against this backdrop, you’d think that state officials would be scrambling to bring the Guard back to full strength. Instead, a state Senate budget subcommittee last week rejected the Guard’s top priority, a $3-million program to make college in California more affordable for Guard members.

Not providing tuition benefits is shortsighted and unreasonable. College aid has long been a standard part of the compensation package for military personnel -- think of it as investing in a soldier’s future in exchange for his or her willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice today. In fact, 49 states -- all but California -- provide some form of tuition assistance to National Guard members, as does the federal government to a limited extent.

The risk of being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan has made Guard service significantly less attractive than it used to be. But the one benefit recruits want most, according to the Guard’s commanders, is state aid for college. Although the state Senate Veterans Affairs Committee approved a tuition proposal in April, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget request for assistance has run into a brick wall in the chamber.

State Sen. Michael Machado (D-Linden), chairman of the budget subcommittee that deep-sixed the funding request, said it wasn’t sufficiently detailed and needed more vetting. State Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena), chairman of the Education Committee, argued that it’s the federal government’s job to provide more benefits and that tuition assistance should be based on financial need. Those are convenient excuses to do nothing, and they miss the point that maintaining the Guard is the state’s responsibility, not Washington’s. The alarming decline in the Guard’s ranks has real consequences -- equipment once assigned here is moving to other states. That’s a problem lawmakers need to solve now, before the next major disaster.