So the Assembly is wrapping up their budget session, and it turns out that the Assembly came up $1.1 billion dollars short of the Senate’s solutions. Oil drilling failed, and the local government raid on HUTA (gas taxes) failed as well.
So where does that leave us? These bills will go to the governor, and since there isn’t concurrence, it will be roughly a $23 billion solution rather than $24 billion. But, the Governor has a line-item veto. He can make various cuts with his blue pencil. But $1.1 billion? Who knows. That seems like a tall order.
Considering what Schwarzenegger did the last time a partial solution was handed to him, I guess there’s an outside shot that he’ll just say no and open a new extraordinary session. But he’ll probably just line-item some, and maybe make up the difference by eating into what is now a $900 million dollar budget reserve.
Is everybody ready to be back here in October?
…We’ll have a couple days for final analyses, but let’s remember that this is a terrible budget and a dark day for California.
…Let me clarify. The Governor can make line-item cuts but he doesn’t necessarily have to, because this is a budget revision. He can also shift around the size of the reserve. In the end, he doesn’t actually have to be in balance for a revision; that’s a Constitutional need at the beginning of the process, as I understand it, not now. Clearly from the Governor’s remarks, he’s not going to veto the whole thing, so this is the “solution,” for now. There also may be Constitutional problems with some of the stuff passed.
…Apparently, the Governor said, jubilantly, “We missed the iceberg”. First, WE didn’t miss anything, YOU dumped the iceberg on poor people. And second, if you really think you’re in the clear, um, don’t look behind you.
sounds a bit optimistic.
At this point, the behavior of the Democratic leadership is sadly predictable. And yeah, this deal is not done. The Democrats caved too easily, so yeah, the governor and the GOP will back for another bite.
But what will the people reading this site do? What will activists in California do, between now and October?
If you’re reading this, ask yourself that question. And make sure you have an answer.
Gas tax raise voted down, prop 1A securitized at extraordinary expense, redevelopment raid passed, but nobody has a clue what redevelopment is, and that will end up failing in court anyway, so it won’t count.
Drilling off the coast blocked.
The media narrative will show this as a great compromise where everybody won.
Nobody’s going to look at what happens next year or the year after, when the stimulus money goes away and the PERS bills start escalating, or in 2013 when we owe another 3 billion from the four year 1A borrowing.
The cuts hurt the poor, and they’re invisible to the media.
Now the question is how the bond markets react to this deal.
But the SCIF sale is bogus, revenue estimates.
Still need a constitutional convention.
have said about how the media is likely to spin this. I wonder if there is any chance that the middle class public will see this as anything other than business as usual. If that is the predominant response then we have to find a way to convince them that it is something much worse.
A big chunk of this budget is forced lending, by cities, individuals, and state employees. This means that next year, the situation will be worse.
Is there anybody who would step up and put a change to Prop. 13 on the ballot before then?
I don’t know if you have had time for this yet, or if you are doing it, but I find myself hoping you will post about this subject for a national audience, certainly for Dailykos or Huffingtonpost if not for print media.
I am reading nothing about this process that has any meaningful information in the national press, or on the blogs that I check every day.
You have been doing brilliant work here. We are all in your debt.