Special Session Doesn’t Cut It
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s call for a special legislative session to deal with a portion of the budget deficit will probably produce nothing more than rhetoric. Finding six billion dollars to cut out of the budget won’t be easy given that the legislature passed the unbalanced budget 100 days late packed with gimmicks that quickly fell apart.
Will this brand new legislature suddenly find solutions that evaded the previous legislature — over the holiday season no less?
Certainly, the majority Democrats would like to smooth the way for Governor-elect Jerry Brown and at least put this current year’s budget in balance before the new governor has to challenge the monstrous debt he inherits. But, that almost certainly means cutting to the bone programs that the Democrats do not want to cut and, in fact, found ways to fund after Governor Schwarzenegger chopped spending with his line item veto.
Brown’s Job Got Twice as Hard
Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.
Less than a month ago, on Oct. 18, Moody’s Investor Service issued a report calculating California’s situation as “at least $12 billion in future budget gaps.”
Now, the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report calculating a deficit of $25 billion — double the Moody’s number:
Our forecast of California’s General Fund revenues and expenditures shows that the state must address a budget problem of $25.4 billion between now and the time the Legislature enacts a 2011-12 state budget plan. The budget problem consists of a $6 billion projected deficit for 2010-11 and a $19 billion gap between projected revenues and spending in 2011–12.
Bell and the Costs of Civic Disengagement
Obscene salaries, conflicts of interest, lavish travel
expenses . . . I am still on the "Local" page of the paper, right? I didn’t accidentally flip to
"International"? Nope. This really is
about local government in California. At
least other parts of the world have an excuse.
They are still learning this whole democracy thing. But California is the birthplace of
progressive democracy, the home state of sunshine laws. How do these things happen here?
They happen because transparency only works if people are
looking. If the recent scandals teach us anything, it is the importance of
keeping our eyes open.
The decision that led to scandal in the City of Bell may
have begun behind locked doors in some smoke filled room, but it was approved
by ballot. The problem was that less one
percent of Bell’s residents voted on a measure to detach the city from state
restrictions on municipal compensation. It was a decision that impacted every resident
of the city. And it occurred, in large
part, because citizens were disengaged.