Cuts would deal with triggered cuts and $13B 18 month deficit
by Brian Leubitz
What some are calling a “ransom note” others call the terrible truth. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal sets a dark scenario for the state. And yet, somehow we have gotten to the point that a dystopic future with three less school weeks is somehow optimistic.
Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled his new budget plan, calling for a painful $4.8-billion cut in public school funds if voters reject a proposed tax hike that he hopes to put on the ballot in November.
Despite the possible reduction – the equivalent of slashing three weeks from the school year – the spending blueprint Brown released Thursday is a relatively optimistic document. It assumes he will have to close a $9.2-billion deficit, a vast improvement over last year’s $26-billion gap.
Half of the deficit would be wiped out through the temporary half-cent sales-tax hike and increased levies on the wealthy that Brown wants voters to approve – or by the schools cuts. The remainder would be eliminated with reductions in welfare, Medi-Cal and other programs. (LA Times)
The plan calls for cutting three thousand state workers at a time when jobs are already scarce. It calls for additional Medi-Cal cuts, which frankly, I didn’t think possible and might end up in court. And at this point our welfare system is essentially dead. So, optimism abounds.
Over [in Bloomberg, Dan Schnur http://www.bloomberg.com/news/… a Republican and former FPPC chair, has this to say about it:
“It’s the most expensive ransom note in California political history,” Dan Schnur, a former aide to Republican Governor Pete Wilson and now director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
Which is really rather rather funny because how often legislative Republicans have played the ransom game. Try doing a search on Calitics for ransom note, you get lots of results. Like this one from March with their 57 requests. Or this one from 2009, where Sen. Hollingsworth wanted to do Intuit’s bidding and get rid of a tax simplification tool. The hits just keep on coming.
But here’s the thing, education is 40% of the budget, and we can’t pretend that we can keep making cuts forever without touching education. Call it whatever you want, but unless we get revenues, it ain’t going to be pretty. Telling voters the truth isn’t a ransom note.
Which shows that they don’t yet appreciate the value of telling the truth, no revenue = barbaric cuts to essential services. Period.
Yesterday, during negotiations with a school district, we were repeatedly told that this is the “new normal,” that even with new revenues, there would never be new money because the state can never catch up with the deferrals. It’s an extremely convenient view for managment when making concessionary demands from unions.
This past week, South Humboldt USD voted to eliminate busing entirely. This is a rural district, those kids need their buses. It’s possible that some Californians need to see a Grapes of Wrath lifestyle ahead for the state in order to take our revenue needs seriously.
if several of these tax/revenue initiatives pass in november ’12, do all of them get enacted, or is it like competing contradictory laws, where the one with the bigger margin goes into effect?
This may be a ransom note, but the real kidnappers are those who have sold out our state to Grover Norquist an the Tea Baggers.
We need to figure out how to get businesses from not fleeing California. Get companies to build factories in Victorville, not Utah.
Because the wealthy and their supporters are going Galt we are having problems.
Read this online thought it funny in relation:
The Private Twitter Chatter:
The Governor:
I am the only honest person in Sacramento. #winning
Legislative Democrats:
Folks facing a primary challenge can’t vote for $2 billion in combined CalWORKs/MediCal/IHSS cuts. Is there any alternative? #NoWayOut
Legislative Republicans:
Good plan to continue the shrinking of California government, the governor’s triggers will cut it $5.4 billion more, and we don’t even have to vote for it. #WeLoveProp25
Business:
Budget and tax proposal looks like a Pete Wilson plan we can live with. #PleasantlySurprised
Labor:
Can we support this budget and fund the tax initiative under promises that things will be better in 2013-14? #RockAndHardPlace
Counties:
This governor may be the best thing for us or the worst thing. #WhichIsIt
Cities:
Remember when we were relevant? #OverplayedHand
Do-gooders:
Did a Democratic governor really just propose kicking a couple hundred thousand poor parents off welfare? #WTF
We are still not there yet. We complain about but don’t change. In a sense, our minds seem to be stuck in this mode, possibly in denial, but definitely stuck. Somehow we are of the impression that “schools” don’t have to change drastically from the brick and mortar to the real time internet classroom which they can become. Somehow, fear of this change, if that’s what it is, fear of somehow losing this wonderful fat-filled existence of ours is just too much for people. IMO, this really can’t be about who’s to blame anymore, none of us have figured out how to do it right.
See what I mean by denial? Until we let go of the past we are doomed by it. Teachers who can use and understand the internet abound. Our school systems however our clogged with the deadwood of those who can’t let go of the salary, the security, the hope that when the pendulum swings back to what seemed to work so well in the (their) past, it will bring that past back they’ll be safe. As one who worked with and against that system for 25 years in classrooms at the elementary, the high school, and the junior college level, I feel sure that a six year old in front of a computer/pad is no less at risk than the one trapped in the NCLB universe.
Tests, I’ll give you one. Does your school use textbooks?