We all know California is over its head in budget troubles. The budget deficit is at least a $20 billion, state debt levels are unsustainable, we have racked up overwhelming pension obligations, and no agreement on how to tackle these problems. There is no silver bullet solution-a great many things are going to have to change in California to solve these problems.
Let me suggest two things to start.
First, “Reinventing Government” author and Clinton administration management expert David Osborne provides part of the solution in a new Reason study on how California can build a better budget. The Next California Budget urges the governor and legislature to start from scratch. Rank education versus transportation versus state prisons and evaluate specific programs within these areas. Not everything can be funded, so what are the state’s specific goals and top priorities? What are citizens demanding and what are they willing to live without? Do taxpayers want to reduce spending or raise taxes to achieve the goals they set?
Every year our political leaders create a patchwork budget that makes the deficit look smaller while actually kicking the can, and tough decisions, down the road. This study offers the folks in Sacramento a legitimate way to give taxpayers the services they deem most important while getting rid of ineffective and unnecessary spending.
Read The Next California Budget here, or just the introduction here.
Second, a good place to start looking at new approaches is with the corrections system, which is having its own crisis. The state’s prison system is severely overcrowded, with 167,000 inmates in a system designed for 84,000. Federal judges have ordered California to release inmates to reduce crowding. And a federal Receiver has taken control of California’s correctional health care services in the wake of a 2001 class action lawsuit over the quality of medical care in the state prison system.
A new Reason Foundation-Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation study finds that a modest expansion of the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in corrections would save nearly $2 billion over the next five years. More aggressive use of PPPs could save over $1 billion per year. Not only would PPPs help close the budget gap, but they are a key part of addressing the crisis in our state prisons
The report shows that California spends three times as much per prisoner as Texas, which has nearly as many inmates. Texas spends $42.54 per inmate each day, while California spends at least $132.98 an inmate every day. Florida, with the third largest inmate population in the country, spends $52.90 a day per inmate.
Simply put: private prisons offer California a huge opportunity to save money and put competitive pressure on the existing system to reform. The state’s labor costs and the lack of incentives to reduce costs have created a prison system that is helping wreck the state budget. Our partial privatization plan isn’t going to solve all of the problems, but it can put a big dent in them.
Read PPPs for Corrections in California here or a summary version here.