Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom railed against tuition increases and said Wednesday that the state's master plan for higher education is outdated, promising "a different narrative" for higher education by the end of the year.

It was unclear what the plan might contain or how Newsom, a Democrat, might propose to fund it.

"We're going to come up with some out-of-the-box recommendations, is our hope and expectation," he told The Bee's Capitol Bureau.

Fifty years after the production of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, Newsom said he and officials are preparing to "try to create a different narrative for higher education as a system, as opposed to UC as a system, CSU as a system and community colleges."

The University of California suffered a $650 million state budget cut this year and faces another $100 million this winter if state revenue falls short of expectations and trigger cuts are enforced.

UC regents voted in July to raise tuition by 9.6 percent, following an 8 percent increase the previous year. Newsom was one of four regents to vote against the increase. He voted against a tuition increase California State University trustees approved this summer, too.

"You can destroy a system that Lincoln built, with the college grants, the land grants," Newsom said. "It took hundreds of years to build a system, and you can destroy it in a few years. And what we're doing is walking down that path. And I know I sound like a cliché, like every single lieutenant governor, opposing the tuition increase, demagoguing it, putting a press release out, organizing the students for some political hay. But I believe this in my gut."

Newsom rejected the suggestion that lawmakers' hands are tied by California's budget crisis and by funding guarantees for K-12 education.

"I totally reject that, too," he said. "If you value something, you invest in it. Schwarzenegger found money. I mean, he had a huge budget deficit. They finally said, 'You know what, this year we're not going to cut it, because last year we crushed it.' "

Newsom has promoted a jobs plan in his first year in office, calling the economic circumstance "code red" in California. But from his largely powerless post, he seems sometimes to be frustrated.

"People can't afford us to have, and dither, the same budget debate," he said. "Because whether it's a trigger of $100 million, $50 million, $10 million, next year the wall of debt, can't get the taxes on because we've got to deal with the pension thing, which didn't go far enough, some will say. … Meanwhile, the world has passed us by. We've lost two years."

The state, Newsom said, needs a "pattern interrupt."

In other matters:

• Newsom was generally supportive of California's troubled high-speed rail project. He said there is merit to starting construction in the Central Valley, but he said "if someone has a better idea" it should be explored.

• Newsom said he opposes the federal government's crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in California: "I like the old Barack Obama, who said that he didn't think it was appropriate to spend the time and resources … on this type of enforcement."

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Call David Siders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1215. Follow him on Twitter @davidsiders.

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