Republicans hoping to corner Brown with Budget Plan

Days before Gov. Jerry Brown releases his revised budget proposal for the coming year, Republicans in the state Assembly have offered their own outline they say would balance the budget without renewing temporary taxes that have expired or about to do so.

Republicans are clearly hoping to corner Brown and Democratic lawmakers by making education funding the centerpiece of their plan. They say they are proposing the same level of spending Brown has already offered for education, and no further cuts to the state’s universities.

Brown is widely expected to say that unless the state extends the temporary taxes, deep cuts to schools are inevitable. With their plan, Assembly Republicans will claim that education spending can be protected without extending the temporary taxes.

The Republican plan also spares $500 million in local public safety funding and scraps Brown’s proposal to shift an array of services to cities and counties.

Investing in education will keep California on the Road to Recovery

Gino
DiCaro of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association calls me out here  for not being understanding enough
about the plight of his bosses in the California manufacturing sector.

His
beef is with a recent piece  in which I pointed out that
employment growth in California last year actually outpaced the nation if you
remove the effect of government layoffs and ongoing problems in the
construction industry, which was particularly hart hit by the collapse of the housing
market in California.

PPIC Poll: Both good and bad news for Governor Brown

A new poll released
Wednesday has good news and bad news for Gov. Jerry Brown.

The good news is that
his public approval ratings have rebounded slightly since March, according to
this survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. About 40 percent of
adults now view him favorably, compared to 34 percent a month earlier.

More good news: a
majority of Californians still like the idea of a special election to vote on
the budget, and they say they like Brown’s plan to balance the budget with a
mix of cuts and taxes.

Then there is the bad
news, for Brown.

The voters don’t like
some of the taxes in the package he is advocating, even if they are tied
explicitly to maintaining funding for the schools.

National Budget Compromise deals a Major Blow to Community Clinic Expansion Plans

The budget compromise struck last week by President Obama and Republicans in Congress deals a major blow to plans by community clinics in California and across the nation to expand in order to serve people who will be newly eligible for subsidized health care when the federal health reform takes effect in 2014.

The agreement will take $600 million from the anticipated growth in funding for community clinics, which were expected to play a major role in providing care as part of the federal Affordable Care Act, passed last year and under assault by Republicans in Congress.

The deal shaves that money from $1 billion that had been set aside for the expansion of community health centers, according to Carmela Castellano-Garcia, president and chief executive officer of the California Primary Care Association.

Of the remaining $400 million in that fund, $250 million is already committed, leaving just $150 million to finance new expansions for the health centers. Three hundred and fifty health centers have already applied for a piece of that money.

Californians continue to support Federal Health Reform

A new Field Poll on federal health reform has found that Californians support the law by almost exactly the same margin as they did on the day it passed more than a year ago: 52 to 37. Despite a vigorous debate before and after the bill’s passage, a federal election that centered on the issue, and two federal court ruling finding parts of the law unconstitutional, public opinion here is pretty much frozen in place.

One big reason for that is that peoples’ opinion about the law seem to have as much to do with who they are than what the law would do. Democrats and ethnic minorities – both more numerous in California than elsewhere – support the law in large numbers. Republicans oppose it.

It probably is not a surprise that people who say they have benefitted from the parts of the law that have already been implemented like the law the most. But strangely, those who say they have benefitted are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.

Public safety employee contract may not convince skeptics

If you’re already skeptical about the state’s ability to cut billions of dollars from projected spending levels, the new contract Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration has negotiated with public safety employees will not do much to win your confidence.

A review of the deal by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office shows how far it will likely come from achieving the 10 percent savings that Brown and lawmakers pledged to make it the next round of state employee contracts. The analyst believes the contract will actually increase costs this year, save just 2.8 percent next year and then start adding to the state’s payroll costs again the year after next.

The contract is for Unit 7, the public safety workers who protect state lands and buildings, issue licenses and permits, and conduct investigations. They include California Highway Patrol dispatchers, DMV examiners, Department of Justice agents, park rangers, and Department of Mental Health police. They also include fraud investigators for the automotive repair program.

Younger Californians more positive about immigration than older generations

Attitudes toward immigration have traditionally swung with the economy. When times are good, people feel good about pretty much everything, and less threatened by immigration and its potential effect on them. When times turn bad, folks tend to look for scapegoats, and they either blame immigrants for the economy’s problems or express fears that immigrants will be bad for the country and the state.

California saw this in 1994, when voters approved a measure that sought to end public benefits for undocumented immigrants, and again in 2003, when then-Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain a drivers license, and the backlash against that law helped drive him from office in a recall election.

But the connection between the economy and public attitudes toward immigration may be moderating. Two recent polls suggest that Californians remain fairly sanguine about immigrants and immigration, despite high unemployment and a big and persistent budget deficit.

A Field Poll last week found that nearly half – 47 percent – of registered voters said that recent immigration was having no effect on California’s quality of life. Thirty-nine percent said immigration was making things worse, and 10 percent said it was improving the state’s quality of life.

Field poll suggests Brown has done a good job engaging Californians

The big news in this week’s Field Poll was that 40 percent of California Republicans favor a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to erase the state’s $26 billion shortfall. So far, none of those Republicans seems to be serving in the Legislature, but the results certainly suggest that legislative Republicans can at least vote to place a tax measure on the ballot without fear of being rejected by their base as traitors to the cause.

An even larger group of Republicans — 44 percent — say they support Jerry Brown’s proposal to extend temporary taxes due to expire this year. Fifty-five percent of Republicans oppose the idea. Overall, Brown’s proposal is leading in the poll by a margin of 61 percent to 37 percent, with nearly 7 in 10 Democrats and independents supporting the idea.

The poll suggests that Brown has done a good job engaging Californians in the discussion about the state’s fiscal predicament. Two years ago, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bipartisan group of legislative leaders took a series of budget measures to the voters, they were soundly rejected. One big reason was that the public employee unions spent heavily against the slate of measures because the unions did not like the spending limit and rainy day fund that was part of the package. But the voters were leaning that way before the unions nudged them into a landslide.

A Compromise Budget likely means Deep Spending Cuts to Health Care

In any state budget impasse, attention inevitably focuses on the areas of conflict, and the public’s focus will soon turn to the reluctance of most Republican lawmakers to vote for a plan that would ask voters to extend temporary taxes for another five years.

But even as the debate over revenues begins in earnest, we shouldn’t lose sight of the deep spending cuts that are part of the plan moving toward both floors of the Legislature this week.

The cuts in the health care safety net, in particular, will make it more difficult for the neediest among us, including children and the elderly, to obtain the care they need to stay healthy or to get well once they are sick.

The cuts reduce payments by 10 percent to doctors, hospitals and nursing homes that care for the poor. California already has among the lowest reimbursement rates in the country, paying, on average, less than half what doctors get under the Medicare program.

Budget committee passes spending plan; now the real talks can begin

Cross-posted at HealthyCal.

Democrats on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee passed a budget Thursday that largely reflects Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to close a $25 billion shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and extensions of temporary taxes.

The budget bill passed on a party-line vote and now goes to the Assembly and Senate for approval. Democrats control both houses, and, thanks to the passage of Proposition 25 last November, they now have the ability to adopt a budget by majority vote rather than the two-thirds super-majority that was required until this year.

But they still need a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, and, by most accounts, even to put a tax increase on the ballot, as Brown has proposed. And so far, most Republicans in the Legislature have said they will not vote to send the governor’s tax plan to the voters in a special election in June.