Month: May 2009

On Thursday it was announced that 93 county employees in Yolo accepted a so-called Golden Handshake or early retirement.  This included the number 2 person in the District Attorney’s Office, Ann Hurd and the County’s Public Defender Barry Melton.

Both are 62, only a few years before their normal retirement.  The county has a huge problem–probably bigger than any other local jurisdiction.  They face a deficit upwards of 24 million dollars which is greater than one-third of the county’s general fund budget.

I have gone back and forth on the ballot initiatives as to whether or not to support them.  A few weeks ago I reached what I thought was my final decision, I would simply hold my nose and vote for them.  At that time, we were projected to have about a 14 or 15 billion dollar deficit if the propositions failed.  That would be reduced to a more manageable but still serious eight billion.  I did not like what the propositions did, but if they failed other things that were important would have to be cut, including more from education.  So I was going to hold my nose and vote for them.

It is ironic that in the last week, the very measures that Governor Schwarzenegger has trotted out to “scare” voters into for the measures, are the very reason I am now going to vote against all of the propositions.  The deficit is too large and passing the propositions makes too little impact on the budget deficit to warrant holding my nose.  I will briefly get into each one of them individually, but many of them rely on simply shifting and borrowing monies.  That’s not much of a solution to the longer term problem.

Critics are crying foul with the timing of Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement that the state will face a deficit of 21 billion dollars should the state not pass the ballot initiatives next Tuesday.  But at this point it almost does not matter.  If they do pass it, the deficit will be a mere 15 billion dollars, hardly cause for celebration.

At this point, six billion is helpful if Propositions 1C, 1D, and 1E pass.  That state would gain six billion dollars against the total total deficit by virtue of shuffling monies around.

Last week the County put off a decision on cutting off indigent health services to undocumented residents.  However, the county will have to act on it and it is likely given the fiscal conditions of the county, they will act to cut off these services.

It is greatly ironic that one of the Republicans on the Board of Supervisors, Matt Rexroad seems to get the fact that while it would seem the fiscally prudent thing to do, cutting off health services to indigent patients probably costs more in the long run.

There is an election one week from Tuesday and the electorate is angry.  And the electorate has every right to be angry. 

According to a recently released survey from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), Californians are extremely pessimistic about the California economy, give the governor and legislature approval ratings that hover near record lows, and show less trust in state government than they have ever before. The PPIC survey found that a mere 16 percent of likely voters say they can trust the government in Sacramento to do what is right.   And they think the nation as a whole is in better shape than California.