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Governor Calls Lawmakers’ Budget Impasse ‘Inexcusable’
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday told state workers to take a third day off without pay each month after Republican lawmakers blocked Democrats’ plans to ease California’s deficit and allow the government to keep paying bills, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The governor unveiled billions of dollars in additional proposed cuts to schools and public universities to deal with a deficit that he says is now $26.3 billion, an increase of $2 billion, the Times reported on its Web site Wednesday afternoon.
The lawmakers and governor continue to be at odds over passage of the pending budget, with the governor berating lawmakers for continuing their debate over the budget, calling their actions “inexcusable.”
The Schwarzenegger administration said the latest round of cuts would decrease state spending by an additional $4.9 billion.
If lawmakers and the governor hadn’t agreed on a plan to end the deficit — or at least part of it — by the end of Wedndsday, State Controller John Chiang will begin handing out IOUs in lieu of checks to pay the debts California owes.
Chiang will meet Thursday morning to determine what interest rate the state will pay on the $3 billion a month in IOUs it is likely to begin issuing to contractors — and others, including the elderly, disabled and low-income.
State officials said the last time the state issued IOUs was in 1992.
“We really need a budget fix,” 19th District state Sen. Tony Strickland told Noozhawk on Wednesday. While the state has had a working budget in place since February, he said, and struggles to align its finances this time every year, this year “we continue to have a major cash flow problem.”
Strickland said he remains hopeful for a budget resolution in the coming days. Beyond that, he said, California needs to stay focused on attracting businesses and not raising taxes.
“Creating more jobs is how to get us out of this mess. We need to reverse our downward spiral,” he said. Click here to read a commentary piece Strickland submitted to Noozhawk about the state budget crisis.
Those proposed cuts, which were approved by the Assembly last week on a bipartisan vote, were to have affected the fiscal year that ended Tuesday. But the opportunity to make the reductions expired at the stroke of midnight, after the package failed in party-line votes.
The governor has responded to the budget snafu by warning lawmakers that he will refuse to sign any legislation linked to the budget until there is full agreement on the budget.
Officials have said that not making the cuts means California will owe several billion dollars more to schools in the coming fiscal year; the state’s complex education financing system is based on appropriations from the previous year.
The new furloughs would begin July 10, the administration reported Wednesday.
— Noozhawk staff writer Laurie Jervis can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 07.02.09 @ 03:42 AM
The selfishness of government is shocking, and California know’s they are way over staffed and over paid. The time to cut all programs, staff, and wages is now, just like you and I.
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» on 07.02.09 @ 09:19 AM
Yep, and start at the top. Senior administrators, whatever their title, should take a 20% in pay and benefits. Government should ‘delayer’ just as industry did 15 years ago.
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» on 07.02.09 @ 10:49 AM
True. But also a total crock.
When Arnold’s party (enthusiastically supported by Tony Strickland) recalled former
Governor Gray Davis, Arnold promised that it would be “simple and easy to clean up
Sacramento’s financial mess ... and I know exactly where to start.”
Six years later, Arnold has NOT cleaned up the mess. He did NOT know where to
start. Or where to finish. And a big part of the ongoing deficit - recession aside -
was his insistence that the state roll-back the existing vehicle registraton fee (an
idea Strickland also supported).
If you set aside all the hot air, and bureaucratic complexities, you will see that 80%
of the state’s deficits come from two key sources:
Lost revenue from the pre-existing DMV vehicle reg fees, and
The “fair share compensation” from Washington - which NEVER arrived - to help
compensate California for its costs in absorbing millions of illegal immigrants.
If California’s congressional delegation had voted unanimously, as a single body,
to insist that Washington reimburse us for immigration-absorption costs (they
never did), and if Arnold had not gotten rid of that DMV revenue to the General
Fund, California’s budget hit from the current recession would be no worse than
that for most other state’s.
So when the governor beats his chest in public, and blames others (there is lots of
blame to go around), he should also take a long look in the mirror.
He might also remember the advice offered him when he first ran by those famous
lightweights, Warren Buffett and George Shultz, that he immediately review the
impact on state finances of Prop 13, and the fact that business properties never get
re-assessed, the way private homes do. The guv thanked them for their advice, and
never went back to it again, even when he pretended he was going to “blow up all
the boxes.”
The Prop 13 effect is the biggest “box” of all, and he never touched it with a ten-foot pole.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
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» on 07.02.09 @ 05:18 PM
Now, let’s be fair to Arnold, Publius, and not ignore history. When he was elected, his allies put a number of propositions before the voters that would have made significant progress on the budget, just as he had promised. EVERY ONE FAILED. The voters of CA thereby proved themselves to be clinically schizophrenic (unable to separate reality from fiction), just as they continue to be by continuing to elect the same disfunctional legislature. The one area that did not require voter approval was Workers’ Compensation. Arnold, as promised, drove reforms in the system that reduced premiums by (in my small business’ case) 67%. Now, of course, the United FillMyPockets lobby of attorneys and special interests are trying to unfix that fix.
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» on 07.02.09 @ 05:20 PM
Oh yeah, and one of Arnold’s campaign promises was to eliminate the (highly progressive) vechicle tax. So he kept his promise on that and the VOTERS crippled him on the other measures.
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