State of California

“We accepted your invitation to bring you our ideas on important structural reforms and willingly took to heart your admonition ‘to get out of our comfort zone,’ ” the letter to the Democratic governor from key Republicans read. “Although it is clear that you engaged in our conversations seriously, it appears we have reached an impasse in our discussions about how to move the state forward.”

On Thursday, a Senate-Assembly budget committee voted to send the spending plan to the floor of both houses in the legislature this week, and that includes the complete elimination of the state’s redevelopment program.

David Crane, a former advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and current member of the UC Board of Regents, wrote, “In the private sector, collective bargaining is used to equalize the power of employees and employers.”

The paper reports that the opinion, sought by the Senate’s Republican Leader Bob Dutton, does not specifically address the Governor’s proposal.

Recognizing that an effort to reduce pensions for current workers would prompt legal challenges, the commission argued that public pension funds’ dire fiscal conditions necessitates themselves reducing benefits for current employees as well as merely reducing benefits for new hires. Creating a second tier is insufficient to address current fiscal problems.

Wolk’s legislation, Senate Bill 214, is a compromise between the entrenched camps of the Redevelopment debate. For proponents of eliminating redevelopment, claiming that they are wasteful and operate to the detriment of schools and other core services, it will protect source of revenues to these services from being usurped by redevelopment. For the proponents of redevelopment, SB 214 would allow Infrastructure Financing Districts (IFDs) to absorb many of the functions of the current redevelopment agencies.

Republicans are already calling it a ploy to convince legislators to place the tax measure on the ballot, that would cut the needed budget cuts in half.

The recent polling by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) shows that 70% of the voters singled out prisons as a major area where the budget should be cut.  This exists, in fact, across party lines and geography.

“This is not a time for politics as usual,” he said in a line that is usually reserved more for rhetoric than substance.  However, this time it is different.

However, earlier this week, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released their findings showing that a strong majority say that a special election on Governor Jerry Brown’s tax and fee proposal is a good idea, and a majority are generally satisfied with his budget plan.

However, as critics are quick to charge, Governor Brown’s budget proposal has promised cuts to about every sector except one, pension reform. Orange County Columnist Steven Greenhut, a leading proponent of pension reform, accused Jerry Brown of dodging the issue.

Rather, 26 of the 31 million dollars goes directly to the city’s redevelopment agency (RDA) which ostensibly uses money to  “subsidize development projects, build affordable housing, fix up rundown buildings and beautify streets.”

Time will tell whether he will be successful in convincing a few Republicans to allow the tax plan to go before the voters, where he will get to make his case.  Many will quibble at the margins, but frankly I cannot think of a bolder first week in any recent administration.

In a statement, Governor Brown said that his proposed budget will be comprised half of budget cuts and half tax increases in order to attack a deficit that is estimated at $25.4 billion.

He went on to argue, “On fiscal and budgetary matters, Schwarzenegger suffered defeat after defeat. The state’s fiscal record after his seven years — California has the same budget deficit now as in 2003, with a much larger debt — has led commentators across the political spectrum to write him off as a failed governor. That conclusion has a factual basis — and is deeply wrong. And it obscures the most interesting and important lesson of his governorship. Put simply: The sheer number and surpassing scale of Schwarzenegger’s failures to fix the state budget constitute a grand and peculiar success, especially if Californians heed the lessons they provide.”

Now Dan Morain, Senior editor of the Sacramento Bee, is reporting that Comcast is the latest to play “take our tax breaks and run.”