Jerry Brown didn’t lay down a whole lot of specifics for his budget plan during the campaign. His basic tack was that a) he’ll work with the legislature, because he knows how this is done and b) he won’t raise taxes without a vote. Now, that isn’t to say that Whitman had anything more detailed or in any way better, but she did have many glossy magazines. So, that’s fun.
But, now that Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento doing the less general, and much nastier work of trying to come up with budget solutions, he’s seeing just how bad this mess really is. And, when you strip away all the budget games, you get a real mess. George Skelton says that is exactly Jerry’s plan: show them what we have wrought with our conflicting legislative measures, ballot measures and our desire for high services but low taxes. You can’t have them all:
“He wants to force the Legislature and the public to really confront how bad the situation is,” says Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford. “But he won’t be talking solutions yet.”
As part of the education effort, Brown intends to demonstrate exactly what living within our means without a tax increase is all about. He’ll do that when he sends the Legislature his first budget proposal in early January.
“The plan is to produce a budget without smoke and mirrors,” Clifford says.
Without the usual masquerade of smoke and mirrors, the document will be too glaringly ugly for most people, based on polls.
Of those who voted in the Nov. 2 election, 65% believe that the state government “wastes a lot” of tax money, according to a survey reported Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California. Presumably they blame the old bugaboo “waste, fraud and abuse” for the perpetual deficit.
In a postelection Los Angeles Times/USC poll, 44% of voters thought spending cuts alone would be the best deficit cure. But 44% also supported a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. (LAT)
This is really where Arnold failed. In the end, Arnold is a showman, a ringmaster, trying to juggle many flaming knives in the air. It turns out that he couldn’t just use his shear force of personality to game the whole system. It just didn’t work. So, instead we have a huge mess, and one party (the Republicans) who will give nothing whatsoever. It’s not a winning formula.
Seeing as Brown has now boxed himself in here to a public vote, it looks like we may be heading to another May special election. How we get there, through signatures or a vote that includes Republican input is still up in the air. Whether Brown has the resources to go to the ballot on his own is a pretty large question mark at this point. But a question mark is better than nothing, and the education process has to begin now.
Good for him for getting started even before he takes over.
Hi Brian–I’m not sure I understand your point about Schwarzenegger. Particularly in his last May Revise, I think he was trying to do what Skelton predicts Brown will–propose a budget draconian enough to show voters that a “cuts-only” process will be very painful. Schwarzenegger emphasized there isn’t any low-hanging fruit anymore, and Susan Kennedy would say that we’re cutting into bone now–all the flesh is gone. And Willie Brown came out in favor of the Dems signing off on the cuts, presumably to show voters that they can’t enjoy services they’re not willing to finance.
Now unless Brown’s budget spreads the pain among a wider variety of programs than Schwarzenegger’s, which targeted health and social services programs with narrower and less influential constituencies, I don’t see how his strategy is much different than Arnold’s. If a cuts-only budget does palpable harm to education in particular, it just might convince voters to approve a tax increase. It’s a risky Machiavellian strategy, but I don’t see any other way to close the structural deficit.
Of course he’ll have the resources to qualify a ballot
proposal (the teachers will fund it). Note this is what
he did when he took over in Oakland (went to the public).
It’s still only half-assed if it doesn’t include some kind of reform of the ballot initiative process.
No more ballot box budgeting.
Is Daryl Issa preparing a recall already?
Brian, it seems like one of the big problems with taking proposals to the ballot box is the rule that initiatives can only address one subject. Any realistic budget deal requires tackling several topics at once, on both the spending and revenue sides. Unfortunately, this always leads to a confusing collection of ballot initiatives, which are often approved and rejected in unhelpful or even contradictory combinations by the electorate.
Any thoughts on how a package could be presented to the voters all at once with a realistic chance of passing the whole thing?
i really have to disagree with George Skelton or whoever it is that said voters want low taxes & high quality svcs. we currently do NOT have high quality services. ive lived here in this sewer of a city that they call LA for 9 mos & there is NOTHING high quality that i have seen so far. there is some quanity of things-say freeway-but quality no way. the roads r in worse shape than just about any other state ive seen. and im from PA and the roads r terrible. i was a Dem up til bout august or so-the Dem party runs this city/state pretty much and the job they do SUCK.
spending more money isnt the solution-if we could get quality services id be willing to give them quanity/more money. but what we get now sucks & i have no real hope that that will change with this crew.
u that want more money have to first do quality and THEN i/we would be willing to pay more. hopefully brown gets that but i doubt it.