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August 5, 2009
Finally a Budget.
The Good, Bad, and Ugly.
The good news?
There is no good news. However, the Assembly and Senate leadership did strike a deal with the Governor on a budget that keeps California, one more time, from falling over the cliff.  This budget is not that different from the budget the legislature passed at the end of June that the Governor vetoed with great fanfare.  Three weeks later, with the state issuing IOUs and losing $25 million dollars every day a budget is not passed, he decided that he did agree. A balanced budget was on his desk in June and he opted for more grandstanding. The Governor should be ashamed.
It could have been worse. We think we can now stop issuing IOUs to state vendors, although that's still not certain. Hopefully the state's credit rating won't fall any further, having already been downgraded twice in recent weeks to near-junk status. Mass closure of our precious state parks was taken off the table, although the Governor used his line-item veto to blue-pencil more cuts after the Legislature sent the budget to him, which put at least some parks in jeopardy again.Â
Serious legal questions have been raised about whether the Governor exceeded his authority in those vetoes. The California Supreme Court has said that his authority extends only to new appropriations, while the vetoes he made are to items in the budget he signed in February. He could have vetoed them in February, but he does not get "a second bite at the apple." This issue is likely to end up back before the Court.
I don't count the fact that the budget includes no new revenues as automatically good. Oil companies, for example, are surely celebrating. Thanks to the Governor's patronage, California remains the only one of the 22 oil-producing states in the nation that exempts its oil companies from having to pay an oil severance tax that could be generating billions of dollars every year for schools, health care, parks, transportation, public safety, etc., etc. In 2007, Alaska's Governor raised their oil severance tax to 25%. The proposed 9.9% tax for California would have been a bargain if Governor Schwarzenegger wanted to prove genuine environmental credentials. Â
Related to that, I helped lead the charge that successfully fought off new oil drilling off Santa Barbara that the Governor leveraged into the budget, breaking the promise of decades of environmental protection along that beautiful coast. Another "shame on him" for putting the interests of big oil over those of some of the most vulnerable people in the state. To make up for the money that he had hoped new off-shore oil drilling would generate, he blue-penciled cuts to social services, including a massive blow to the Healthy Families program that provides low-cost health coverage to children and teens whose families don't qualify for Medi-Cal.
The Bad?
Because some of the revenues proposed at the May special election were rejected by the voters, and because Republican caucus members are all required to sign irresponsible pledges not to raise any taxes or revenues regardless of the how dire the circumstances, the budget solution includes more than $15 billion in program cuts. $875 million that will hit the poor, elderly, disabled, and children. Cities and counties that deliver the services people count on every day suffered another raid of roughly $1.7 billion. The Governor wanted $3 billion from local government, but we managed to save about $1 billion, although a massive coalition of cities is readying to file suit to recover all of it.
And, again, our schools took a huge hit of approximately $9 billion, all the way from kindergarten through to the community colleges and UC and CSU systems. Fortunately, the Governor's direct assault on the Prop. 98 funding guarantee to K-12 education, and insistence on suspending it entirely, was rejected by the Democrats and a commitment was made to repay this money to schools when the economy rebounds.Â
Nevertheless, education is going to suffer badly. This means not just the lives of the children themselves who are in our care and who will fall further behind, but also many schools, having already suffered year after year of cuts, that will have to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, and scale back on the core quality and breadth of the education they can and want to provide.
The lost opportunities for new high school graduates who won't be able to afford substantial college tuition increases will ultimately damper the success of California's economy long term, when business depends on an educated workforce to meet the competitive challenges of a global marketplace.
The Ugly?
More accounting gimmicks, including shifting 10% of next year's income tax withholding into this year's budget, and delaying state workers' June 30, 2010 paycheck for one day to July 1, pushing that expenditure into the 2010-2011 fiscal year but counting the revenue this year.
California's governance structure is broken. Carpe diem.
We can't continue down this defensive and reactive path of BandAid government. California is at a tipping point. There is a growing consensus that out of this moment of crisis must come the will to craft realistic structural reforms.
I went to Sacramento to make meaningful change.
- To return our K-12 schools and higher-ed schools to greatness.Â
- To provide quality accessible and affordable health care, especially for our children.
- To protect our environment, and to leverage and transform California as the technological leader of a new "green" economy.
- To promote social and economic justice for all.
- And to make our government more transparent and effective.
I had no idea of the roadblocks I'd be facing beyond just the partisan divide.
- Term limits means everyone's a short-timer. By the time you develop some expertise on issues and have figured out how to navigate the process, you're out.
- The requirement of a 2/3 supermajority to pass a budget and to raise revenues creates a tyranny of the minority. Just a couple of days ago, a citizen ballot initiative was qualified to be circulated for signatures that would reduce the 2/3 to 3/5. If successful, it would go before the voters in November 2010.
- Even the bi-partisan commission that Assembly Speaker Karen Bass formed to craft recommendations for tax reform is reportedly descending into partisan gridlock. It could put out separate majority and minority recommendations, and decline entirely to tackle some of the tough "holy grail" issues necessary to effect real tax reform.
So what can be done?
There is a lot going on in the Legislature. There are bills pending right now on a two-year budgeting process; changing the voter threshold for parcel taxes; limiting the initiative process, including signature gathering and funding sources; and on putting more transparency and better accountability into our actions.
Outside of Sacramento, for example, Charles Young, former Chancellor of UCLA, has just filed suit against the provision in Proposition 13 that requires a 2/3 vote in the Legislature. The legal theory is that when voters passed the 2/3 provision, it was a "revision" of the California Constitution rather than an "amendment." The Constitution allows amendments to be made by the initiative process, but not revisions, which must be made through a constitutional revision commission or a constitutional convention. The California Supreme Court will ultimately be asked to decide.
In the meantime, the Legislature is looking carefully at both a constitutional revision commission and a constitutional convention. I believe that now more than ever there is clear and powerful evidence that time and time again California's 2/3 voting requirement has negatively impacted the lives of all Californians. Unless something changes, it will continue to be a roadblock to our ability to save our Golden State.
Make no mistake. California's governance structure is broken, and we need to fix it. Most of all, as legislators, we need to be visionary in our thinking, and to bring new strategies for governing and delivering public services in California to every decision we make. And we need maximum public input and participation every step of the way.
Committee and Legislative Appointments
Chair, Assembly Education Committee
Chair, Select Committee on Higher Education in the 21st Century
Member:
Assembly Budget Committee
Assembly Judiciary Committee
Assembly Natural Resources Committee
Budget Subcommittee #1 - Health and Human Services
Budget Sub-Committee #2 - Education Finance
Select Committee on Domestic Violence
Member, State Allocations Board
California Commission on the Status of Women
Legislative Liaison, Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission
Legislative Participant, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy
HOW TO REACH ME:
District Office:
6355 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Suite 205
Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Phones: (818) 596-4141 (805) 644-4141
(310) 395-3414
Fax: (818) 596-4150
Capitol Office:
State Capitol
P.O. Box 942849
Sacramento, CA 94249-0041
Phone: (916) 319-2041
Fax: (916) 319-2141
democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a41/ or www.assembly.ca.gov/brownley
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