Not sure where the LA Times is pulling this figure from.

A $5-million plan to replace 78 wood piles that support the pier is among the hundreds of California projects that stand to benefit from the federal stimulus measure. In fact, the first major initiative of the Obama administration could deliver as much as $63 billion to the state.

Some of the money would help ease California’s budget crisis, although officials in Sacramento say it would cover only one-quarter of the nearly $42-billion deficit […]

The $63-billion projection for California — provided by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with ties to President Obama — includes about $44 billion to help pay for things such as infrastructure projects, healthcare for the poor and increased unemployment benefits.

The remaining $19 billion would cover the cost of the individual tax cuts to Californians.

To be fair, the story does make clear that state and local government relief would only directly impact about 1/4 of the budget hole.  But I think it’s dangerous to throw around $63 billion when there’s still going to be a need for tough solutions on revenues and cuts in the budget.  That number throws in the kitchen sink – it includes tax cuts to individuals and businesses, unemployment insurance extension, food stamp benefits, everything.  The fact that more people have money to spend may positively impact the bottom line if California catches some of that cash in sales taxes, but the story – and really the projection by CAP – makes it sound like California will be handed a $63 billion dollar oversized novelty check.  This will only serve to aid the radical Yacht Party agenda, allowing them to say that California just got a bailout so there’s no need for tax increases.  Every sane person knows that the federal windfall will help but not fix the budget, and talk of $63 billion like it’s a sugar plum fairy really hurts the ability to make that fix happen.

For example, when citizens all over the state don’t get their tax refunds in the coming months, with taxpayers on the low end of the income scale feeling the greatest effect, and they read stories about $63 billion flowing to the state, who do you think they’re going to blame?  And I’m sure the Yacht Party will be around to direct that blame, too.

It’s fairly irresponsible to headline “$63 BILLION!” when we know only $10 billion of that will directly hit the budget.

There was a report out yesterday about climate change that basically said we’ve reached a point where dramatic changes to the climate, to sea levels and to weather patterns were irreversible, that even if we dropped everything and eliminated every single carbon emission it would take perhaps thousands of years to return to equilibrium.  I feel the same way about California’s finances.  If every Yacht Party member suddenly turned into Paul Wellstone and we changed every revenue source and dysfunctional structural barrier, we’d STILL be in a world of hurt.  A couple stories today make that clear.

First, a coalition of emergency room doctors has had enough and is suing the state for additional funding to stave off a total collapse of the ER provider network.

Frustrated emergency room doctors filed a class-action lawsuit against the state Tuesday, saying that California’s overstretched emergency healthcare system — which ranks last in the country for emergency care access — is on the verge of collapse unless more funding is provided.

Across the state, scores of hospitals and emergency rooms have shut their doors in the last decade, leading to long waits, diverted ambulances and, in the most extreme cases, patient deaths.

Doctors say the situation is only getting worse. State officials, struggling to balance the budget, have proposed another $1.1 billion in Medi-Cal cuts.

“Are people truly suffering consequences? Absolutely,” said Irv Edwards, one of the doctors represented in the lawsuit and president of Emergent Medical Associates, which staffs 14 emergency rooms in California. “This could happen to you or me. We could be traveling through San Francisco or San Jose, get in a car accident, have a broken leg and end up in the ER, where it takes hours to be treated regardless of our screams. Then we get to diagnosis, and they say, ‘There’s no orthopedic on call. I’m sorry.’ “

ER doctors are required by law to treat whoever comes through the door, and rising ranks of the uninsured have stretched the system beyond repair.  Further, specialists are frustrated with the low reimbursement rates and are taking their names off of call sheets for referral in case emergencies require their services.  A physician on KPCC’s “Air Talk” today described the suit as a “canary in a coal mine,” warning that without increases in rates, not just restoration of funding but increases, there will be no emergency room network in California, period.

Then we have Standard and Poor’s downgrading the state’s credit rating for economic recovery bonds once again, meaning that investors will see a lower-than-expected return and will be far less likely to buy whatever else California sells in the future, which by the way is how we fund our state government.

Finally, you have two ignorant lawmakers, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, asking the US to halt federal oversight of state prisons even though precious little has been done to manage the crisis.  Brown and Schwarzenegger are more interested in saving a few pennies than the Constitutional rights of those incarcerated.  The failure to understand this problem over 30 years have put these disgraced leaders in the position to lie to their own citizens because they can’t face up to their responsibilities.  And as the accountability for this shocking behavior is remote, there is no reason for it to stop.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown feigns to be shocked, outraged and appalled that a proposal to build prison facilities for older, chronically ill, physically impaired, feeble prisoners includes exercise rooms, TV rooms, gardens and natural light.

Taking all this away, as Brown surely knows, wouldn’t save much money – but it would make life difficult for prison workers to manage the prison population. Hey, why not take away air conditioning, too? […]

Brown whines that a federal court-imposed solution would violate “state sovereignty.” Yet he knows perfectly well that the state could avoid any court-imposed solution if it would simply take responsibility for a solution on its own.

One such solution had been proposed by the governor and was supported by legislative Democrats, a bond package for facilities. Senate Republicans killed it last May.

And nothing stops the state from working with Kelso on a negotiated settlement that would reduce the population of older, feeble, chronically ill prisoners or build facilities to house them.

But none of that is happening. Despite all the complaining about the federal courts, the governor, lawmakers and Attorney General Brown seem quite content to let the courts decide – deflecting blame to the judges and away from themselves for the choices that have to be made.

Jerry Brown doesn’t believe that prisoners are human beings and that they lost their Constitutional rights upon conviction, even if they are being held for the medical condition of drug addiction (which he ensured by opposing Prop. 5 in the most dishonest manner possible).  His attitude is retrograde and horrifying and shows a complete failure to account for his own actions.

He’s also the top candidate to be the state’s next governor.

We are past the point of no return.

Yesterday the California Majority Report reported that Assembly Democrats unfurled a scroll of all their budget cuts that they have adopted over just the past 5 years.

Assemblymember Noreen Evans, Chair of the Budget Committee, along with

Assemblymembers Saldana, De Leon, and Hayashi, unrolled a 150 foot long scroll listing all the budget cuts the Legislature has adopted since the 2003-2004 budget. The scroll stretched from the Capitol Rotunda to the Governor’s Office and displayed over 180 cuts totaling over $19 billion.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t do this because they were proud of the cuts.  They impact the least of society, and make it harder for those who are struggling at precisely the time they need to access basic services.

No, the Assembly Democrats did this in the hopes that bipartisan fetishists like George Skelton and Warren Olney and the Sacramento Bee editorial board and California Forward could maybe tell the truth for once about what is holding up the budget.  As the CBP noted yesterday, California is the only state in the entire nation with a 2/3 requirement for both the budget and tax increases.  The “solutions” they have therefore had to provide for past budget gaps are often gimmicky and simply delay problems into the future.  But the other consequence is that Democrats have OVER AND OVER AGAIN authorized often painful cuts to state services.  This is not a problem of “the legislature” – it’s a problem of one side willing (sometimes too willing) to compromise and the other unwilling to do so, protected by the dysfunctional laws of the state.

With the proposed federal stimulus bringing as much as $21 billion to the state over the next two years, there’s a lot of talk about a budget deal, and given the Feb. 1 deadline for action, that’s positive.  But the only specifics we’ve heard is another set of debilitating cuts, offered by Democrats as well as Republicans.  This is asymmetrical warfare, where Democrats act in the interests of the state and magical thinking Republicans whine and cry.  And nobody helps Californians sort it out.  This budget crisis is a media failure.  The blood is on their hands.  

As the countdown to insolvency continues….

• George Skelton occasionally gets a good column in with all the High Broderism, and in today’s, he recognizes that the Governor is all talk when it comes to “blowing up the boxes” of waste in Sacramento.  Not only that, the ideas he does champion, like eliminating the California Conservation Corps, are really stupid.  And that’s not me with the ad hominem attack, that’s me quoting Cal State Sacramento political science professor Barbara O’Connor.

• At the new site CalPensions, there is talk of former Republican Assemblyman Keith Richman using the Internet to gather signatures for an anti-worker “pension reform” initiative.  OOOH!!! Using the Internet!  Next thing you know Richman will get wise to the Facebook and the Twitter!

Thing is, Internet or no Internet, Californians like workers because by and large they ARE workers.

• There’s another powerful special interest waiting to argue their case in the halls of the legislature: say hello to Big Golf, which doesn’t want increased taxes on golf-related activities, which are currently exempt from sales tax.  Don’t make me change the name of Republicans to the Golf Party!

• Arnold’s spending cuts are incredibly painful on the least of society.  The LAO is offering a more sensible and less punitive alternative.

• The San Diego Chargers are looking to “expand” into the LA Market. You have to wonder if San Diego can compete with LA to hold onto the Chargers, if a competition begins.

• This has got to be the coolest photo of the inauguration ever. You can pan around and find some crazy stuff.   Yo Yo Ma taking an iPhone photo, Dick Cheney looking, well, evil, and what I think is a sleeping Clarence Thomas. Really, really cool.  If you were there, can you find yourself?

This was expected, but President Obama is setting in motion a process that would finally allow California to set its own emissions standards.

President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday.

The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions would be one of the most emphatic actions Mr. Obama could take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy.

Mr. Obama’s presidential memorandum will order the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s past rejection of the California application. While it stops short of flatly ordering the Bush decision reversed, the agency’s regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.

Just to pre-empt the whining from the right, the EPA had never before in its history denied California a waiver under the Clean Air Act.  The courts have looked at this from the perspective of the automakers and have ruled repeatedly in favor of California and other states, agreeing that they are well within their rights to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only did the Bush Administration deny California the right to implement their tailpipe emissions law, they slow-walked the fuel efficiency standards passed by the Congress and signed by the then-President in 2007.  President Obama will direct the Transportation Department to finalize those standards as well.

This will be announced in the East Room tomorrow.  We now have a President who understands the need to act swiftly to combat the worst effects of climate change.  California will finally be allowed to lead this effort.

The accounting gimmicks and clever tricks have reached their end.  Sacramento is out of money.

(John) Chiang, whose office writes the state’s checks, says California is about out of stopgap tricks to pay its bills and keep all its programs running.

The controller says California is down to Plan D on its checklist of paying bills. Its cash reserves are piddling; the special funds it borrows from are tapped out, and no one in the private sector is going to lend it any cash at a reasonable interest rate.

That leaves what in state government circles are called “payment deferrals” and what in real life is called “stiffing your creditors.”

In this case the creditors include income taxpayers expecting refunds, college students waiting on state aid, counties that operate public assistance programs, and companies that sell goods and services to state agencies.

Chiang has said he won’t write $3.7 billion worth of checks for those and other state programs if legislators and the governor haven’t reached a deal by next Sunday to close the budget gap.

The overarching problem here is a tax system that is too closely aligned to the boom and bust cycles of the national economy.  That is protected by the 2/3 rule.  And the result is a state that lurches from one crisis to the next, seemingly without end.

Well, the end is pretty much near.  The state may not declare bankruptcy, but that will be functionally the case.  And while IOUs may be a couple months down the road, the payment deferrals are going to put a lot more people out of work.  The counties and various agencies aren’t in the financial position to float by until some revenue floods in.

Of course the fact that IOUs still may be a few months away is of limited consolation to those who will be out of luck if Chiang pulls the no-payment trigger next week.

“For the first time in my career, there are counties facing the reality of just not being able to front the state the money to keep these programs operating,” said Frank Mecca, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Association.

Mecca, who has been in the human services field for 20 years, said counties are facing a double whammy: Revenue is withering while needs are blossoming.

This is at a time when we’re seeing jobless rates as high as 15% in some counties, and over 10% in 31 of the 58 counties in the state.

That stimulus spending from the federal government, perhaps $21.5 billion over two years, can’t come fast enough.  But if there’s not a solution in the next week, it may not matter.  The damage will be done and the pain will spiral out of control.

Here’s a little something so you can head into the weekend informed.

• The SEIU put together a rally of over 1,000 members in Sacramento today, demanding a budget solution.  More are expected in Sacramento, San Francisco and Fresno tomorrow.  Given the desperation, I see nothing wrong with taking it to the streets.  You can also contribute to their letter-writing campaign to the Governor here.

• Here are a couple of real victories for organized labor and working people.  First, UNITE-Here’s workers won a court decision that will expand the Living Wage ordinance in Southern California and gives 550 laundry workers a better chance to sue Cintas for back wages.  Speaking of back pay, TV networks settled two class-action lawsuits with reality-show workers for $4 million dollars.  These workers were made to falsify time cards and work up to 20-hour days without overtime or meal breaks.  I have some friends in the industry who were parties to these lawsuits and I’m very happy they reached a good conclusion.  The fight continues.

• The Senate GOP is slow-walking the confirmation of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary, which is annoying.  She is more than qualified and her views on the Employee Free Choice Act, which is a legislative fight, are hardly germane as well as well-known.  She deserves a vote and not this nonsense.  America needs a friend to labor at the Labor Department again.

• I have no idea why Rocky Delgadillo is running for Attorney General again.  Rocky has been a real hero in fighting insurance industry malfeasance like rescission, but his recent troubles over his wife running his city-owned SUV into a pole (and she didn’t have a license) and paying for it with city money is a 30-second ad waiting to happen.  Maybe he should wait out a cycle?

• The FDA has approved a Menlo Park-based company for a human trial for a stem cell treatment, the first ever in the US.  This is not just a victory for science but could prove to make California a real leader in medical therapeutics.  We need some expansion in industry here, anyway.

• Good article from Open Left about how cleaner ports can add lots of middle-class green job, as it has with the Clean Trucks program at the port of Los Angeles.

• Shorter Phil Bronstein: Leave Bush ALOOOOOONE!

It’s worthwhile every so often to look for the silver lining in the storm clouds over this state.  After all, we do have a new President!  That seems to be working out!  And his pick for EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, was confirmed last night.  Which means that it’s probably only a matter of days before California gets its long-sought waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions.

With a new occupant in the White House, California could soon start enforcing its landmark 2002 law requiring a sharp reduction in vehicle emissions.

State leaders and environmentalists are pressing for quick approval of a waiver that would let California and at least 13 other states impose tougher air-quality standards than allowed under federal law. The Bush administration rejected the request a year ago, but that could be reversed by President Barack Obama and his environmental team.

During the presidential campaign, Obama said he backed the California law. Last year, he co-sponsored a bill by Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California to approve the waiver.

“If I’m confirmed, I will immediately revisit the waiver,” Lisa Jackson, Obama’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, told Boxer at her confirmation hearing last week.

This would set in motion a program to reduce emissions from vehicles by 30 percent over the next seven years.  It would spur alternative transportation development like SUPERTRAINS out of necessity, and force the production of clean-energy vehicles.  Industry was not going to innovate on their own; they had 30 years to recognize this problem but they sat on their hands.  It’s not a question of whether or not we can afford to implement this; given the natural disasters like wildfires that hit the state with increasing frequency, given the melting of the Sierra snowpack which decreases our access to water resources, given the public health effects of dirty air (a recent report showed that clean air increases lifespans by up to three years), given all the ancillary costs of climte change, we can’t afford not to.

The Governor and state leaders have been lobbying for the waiver since President Obama’s inauguration, and I’m confident that we’ll see granting within the next week.