1:00pm | The next most important number for the Long Beach State Forty-Niners might well be Twenty-Six. As in Prop 26, one of the initiatives on the crowded California ballot that voters passed last week.

We will get to the 49er part in a moment, but we start with Prop 26. KPCC, the Southern California Public Radio member-supported network explains the issue in this way: “It’s tough to pass a new tax in California. It takes a two-thirds vote by state lawmakers, or in a county or city, two-thirds of the voters. But to pass a new “fee,” all it takes is a majority of… lawmakers, county supervisors or city council members. The California Chamber of Commerce says business in the state is taxed to death and now it’s getting ‘fee’d’ to death, too.”

What the Chamber of Commerce apparently wants to change are some “regulatory fees,” but augmenting the athletic fee effort is something different (but clearly needed in light of rising tuition, housing, books, and other scholarship-related costs for the 15 or so teams that wear LBSU uniforms).

Insiders say that state business entities had an emergency conference call yesterday about Prop 26, and worried about a move to declare every single “fee” in the state to be in need of a majority vote of the people to re-affirm – yes, even already in place fees, and certainly any new ones. The same parties think this is the real reason fees at the CSU and UC just became tuition. If that take is correct, then the impact on athletics would be severe, even though experts still do not know whether the Prop 26 authors have in mind the need to re-affirm all existing fees, or just new ones.

Under the new CSU tuition rates approved Wednesday, the athletics at LBSU fell an additional $71,000 behind on top of an existing “scholarship shortfall” of $766,000. In addition to a budget increase for facilities, travel, officials, uniforms, etc. the campus would need about $200,000 more per year to match the effort of most other Big West schools. Together it would appear that most LBSU sports get roughly two thirds of what they need. The total of the new $71,000 tuition costs, the scholarship shortfall of about $766,000 and the “under funding” of $200,000 means that the 49ers, with or without the impact of Prop 26 are at least a million dollars a year short of where they would like to be.

The Long Beach Post will continue to follow this story as details become available.