Brown Education Summit Must Look at Where the School Money Goes
Governor-elect Jerry Brown holds his second budget summit tomorrow at UCLA focusing on the budget challenges for education, the largest portion of the state budget. One place the summit must look at is why more of the current dollars spent on K-12 education are not getting into the classroom.
Last summer, the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy prepared a study for the California Chamber of Commerce, which reveled that over a five-year period from 2003-4 to 2008-9, K-12 overall education expenditures increased. However, money going into the classroom declined.
The researchers at the Davenport Institute continue their research (sponsored by the Small Business Action Committee) and will issue a more complete report next month. Dr. Steven Frates, one of the study’s authors, said the updated report would be more comprehensive in detail and scope because it will provide precise expenditure data for every one of the state’s thousand-plus school districts. Frates indicated the comprehensive study would support the earlier findings of a growing education bureaucracy at the expense of classrooms.
Governor-Elect Brown Begins Long and Winding Road to Fix State Budget
Word from the state Legislative Analyst on Wednesday is that the budget
is scarier than we thought. But Governor-elect
Jerry Brown is determined to tame the budget beast.
Brown discussed the issues and his plans at a special meeting of
legislators and local officials. It was
clear that the once and future Governor grasps the enormity of the problem, as
he outlined the most important themes:
- The last three annual budgets were passed with
dubious solutions that were predominately one-time in nature, often
with borrowed resources. - More than 70 percent of the General Fund budget
is managed by schools and counties.
This isn’t a Sacramento problem; it is everyone’s problem. - Higher education and the prison system are the
primary activities managed by the state. - The revenue system that supports state spending relies
on the income tax, in particular on upper income people. - Recovery will take time. There are more threats ahead, and there
are no magic elixirs.
So what
course should the Governor and lawmakers take to get the state out of this mess?
Building the Train to Nowhere
Cross-posted on New Geography.
The California High Speed Rail Authority has approved building its first 54 miles in the San Joaquin Valley. A somewhat longer route, 65 miles, has been indicated in a number of press reports, but Authority documents indicate that only 54 miles of high speed rail track will be built. The route would start in Corcoran, and go through Fresno to Borden, a small, unincorporated community south of Madera. All of this would cost $4.15 billion. The route would include two stations, in Fresno and Hanford/Visalia.
The segment was adopted under pressure by the United States Department of Transportation, which was interested in ensuring that the line would be usable (have “independent utility”) by Amtrak should the high speed rail project be cancelled due to lack of funds. The first section of the California high speed rail line would instead be a somewhat incongruously high-tech Corcoran to Borden spur, or perhaps more accurately stub to the region’s rather sparse conventional rail services.
There are appear to have been concerns that growing opposition movements in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas could have delayed construction, which could have put the federal money at risk. The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters, perhaps the leading political columnist in the state implied an ulterior motive:
The Age of the ‘Clawback’ Has Arrived
News lately has featured some
stories, which the average reader may have missed, about a legal procedure
which is becoming more common during this economic firestorm – the
‘Clawback.’ It sounds like another Freddy
Krueger horror flick, but it’s actually quite an interesting development
for us to consider here.
While we are busy preparing for and
enjoying this year-end holiday season, the Trustee of Bernie Madoff’s Estate,
Irving Picard, has been quite busy. Picard faces a filing deadline in the Madoff Bankruptcy
Case after which he cannot file any more ‘Clawback’ actions, so here they come.
First, Picard has been suing
‘victims,’ of Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme – that is, the ones who did not lose money,
but, instead, who received those payments, year in and year out, at annual
performance rates that simply did not make sense – the ‘lucky winners,’ if you
will. But, who complains when checks
arrive?!? The double-whammy, of course,
is that those same ‘victims,’ (one must be careful in using that word) also
paid income taxes on the monies represented by those checks, income taxes for
which some are now seeking refunds since Madoff really didn’t make any
investments amid all of his elaborate con game.
One financial pundit has called it the "Bernard Madoff recovery
sweepstakes."