Gov. Jerry Brown says California has a “wall of debt” that must be reduced — and is now using it as his chief rationale for a temporary boost in taxes.
At the same time, however, he is proposing to borrow billions more by issuing some of the bonds that voters have authorized for public works projects. And therein lies a rub.
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A budget proposal by the governor would increase funding for K-12 education by $3 billion next fiscal year, but local school districts say the money is not guaranteed and many are still preparing for the worst.
Gov. Jerry Brown released a new budget proposal Monday that reflects an increase in tax revenues, reducing the overall state deficit to just under $10 billion. The governor’s budget proposal combines cuts and tax increases to bridge the remaining state deficit.
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You have to remember that the Capitol operates like Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s fictional and nonsensical society where nothing is what it appears to be.
That’s why good news — that the state of California’s revenues finally appear to be moving up rather than down — may be bad news to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature’s dominant Democrats.
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California has become such a basket case that outsiders are starting to parachute in and report on the tales of woe from our deficit-wracked, economically stagnant and politically dysfunctional state.
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As Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators struggle — so far unsuccessfully — to close the state’s chronic budget deficit, local governments and schools throughout California face fiscal crises of their own.
The stubborn recession that exacerbates the state’s budget problem has also adversely affected local governments’ property and sales tax income. Meanwhile, counties and schools have been hit by their dependence on Sacramento for support.
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There’s no single reason why California, once a model of fiscal probity, finds itself with an intractable budget crisis.
Rather, it’s been budgetary death by a thousand cuts — countless single-purpose decisions over several decades by voters and politicians to either increase spending or reduce revenues, eventually resulting in what Capitol bean counters call a “structural deficit.”
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The timing of Gov. Jerry Brown’s “12-point pension-reform plan” last week was no accident.The plan was released a couple days after his negotiations with Republicans on a state budget deal collapsed. The latter contended that Brown had balked at their demands for public pension reforms because of opposition from unions that helped him win the governorship last year.
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Have you ever watched one of those predictable and boring movies where you wish you could just skip the obligatory chase and romance scenes and get to the “I see it coming” ending already? That’s what I feel like as I watch the unfolding drama regarding the state budget crisis. Despite all the machinations, Californians are not going to boost their taxes to prop up this ill-performing government.
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Success, it’s been said, has many fathers, while failure is an unwanted orphan.
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With a June special election focused on tax extensions looking less and less likely, the possibility of hundreds of San Francisco teachers being laid off has increased.On March 1, the district announced it could lay off 473 teachers, aides and administrators before the coming school year, or about 8 percent of that workforce. By state law, the district must give pink slips to anyone it intends to dismiss by May 15.
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