The roadmap to compromise: Staying focused on long-term fiscal reform is the way to fix the state budget
The failure of our lawmakers to reach a reasonable compromise on the state budget dangerously erodes the confidence Californians now have in their government.
That palpable public mistrust was an overarching concern when California Forward fashioned a five-part reform package for a new budget system that, if adopted, would result in smarter fiscal decisions at the state Capitol over the long-term.
The reform proposals – titled It’s about Trust: A State Budget Process that Restores Public Confidence and just released – is based on the best management practices from state and local governments around the nation and on conversations with thousands of Californians.
Budget reforms cannot fill the estimated two-year $42 billion budget gap — that requires the difficult arithmetic of cutting programs, raising taxes and borrowing money. But the reforms are a way for Democrats and Republicans to send a clear message to their constitutiencies: revise the budget-making process so that the next fiscal crisis is managable. Because right now, if we’ve learned anything, it’s that our current budget-making process is part of the problem.
What California’s Impending Financial Bust Means for The Court System
I defer to the many writers on F&HD who know far more than I do about California politics and the impending financial crisis when this state shortly runs out of money. I make my living in the courts, mostly in the Los Angeles Superior Court (“LASC”) system, which once boasted that it had more sitting judges than in all of Great Britain, and I have done so through four down economies in my 32 years as a civil trial lawyer – this being the fifth, and by far, the worst I have ever seen or dared to imagine. My point here is to illustrate what will happen to our civil state court system when California shortly goes broke.
Criminal cases have absolute preference over any civil cases due to the Speedy Trial Act, by which a criminal defendant accused of a crime, if he or she wishes, can force the prosecution to go to trial in a matter of months, ready or not, or the case must be dismissed. For this reason, big city civil litigators often bemoan how hard it sometimes is to get a full civil jury panel when the criminal courts get first pick and may not leave enough left over for a full panel to do voir dire, the jury selection process to pick the 12 who will sit in the box. That is the situation in good times.
Does Barbara Boxer possess compromising photographs of all of California’s most promising Republicans?
I don’t know. But there must be some explanation for why Republicans seem to be doing so little to produce a strong candidate to challenge Boxer in 2010.
It’s particularly striking when you consider all the jockeying between potential Republican candidates in the 2010 race for governor. The California GOP is either dead or on life support, depending on whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist (and depending on what you think of Republicans). The party doesn’t have much money and has only a handful of potentially attractive statewide candidates.
In fact, the three strongest statewide candidates in the party might be Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, former Congressman Tom Campbell, and former eBay chief Meg Whitman, who made news this week by resigning corporate board seats to prepare for a career in politics. These three candidates, however, share a problem: they all want to be governor. And they’re going to run against each other.