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Gabbing and Grousing
with Gordy |
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The Politics of California's Budget
Fiasco: The California state budget, which is supposed to be sent to the Governor by June 15 every year and then signed by the Governor, wasn't sent to the Governor this year until September 19 and not signed until September 23. Not only was the budget signed over three months late, but the agreed-upon budget was awful and mostly likely will get only worse. Literally, before the signatures on the budget bill were dry, the budget was already $1 billion (5.4%) below assumed revenues and expected to be $5 billion short for the year. This increases the likelihood of unilateral mid-year cuts, a major cause for concern for all education stakeholders—administrators, faculty, classified, and students. California got into this mess because this year's budget was balanced through smoke and mirrors. The budget was balanced by $10 billion worth of cuts, accounting gimmicks like speeding up tax collections and prepayment of fees for LLCs, and borrowing from future lottery receipts. What was missing, of course, were new sources of revenues. According to the Community College Chancellor's Office, "growth funding provided in the state budget is clearly insufficient to meet the surging demand." The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) pushed hard for "tax the rich" sources of revenues, but failed to convince any Republicans that the increase on the wealthiest Californians was a better solution than the billions of dollars' worth of cuts to already underfunded education, social services, and health care. While the budget lets the rich off scott-free, the young, the poor, and the elderly suffer. The problem in California is not simply a fiscal one, but in many ways a political one. The state is just about ungovernable, due to the constitutional requirement that it takes a 2/3 vote to pass a budget. This requirement subverts democracy. Anyone who has taken an introductory civics course knows that in a democracy the "majority rules and the minority has rights." The 2/3 requirement, however, stands this fundamental principle on its head and allows for the "tyranny of the minority." This situation is undemocratic, unconscionable, and unacceptable. California is one of only two states that require a 2/3 majority to pass a budget. Recent budget negotiations demonstrate this point. The Democratic majority in the legislature yielded and yielded and yielded, while the Republican minority "just said no" to any reasonable tax increases. The longer the process took, the more pressure was placed on the majority to cave in to the minority's demands, until finally the majority just gave up in order to get a budget passed. Truly, if the state were governed democratically, it would have been the minority yielding to the majority, but with the 2/3 requirement, the opposite occurred. There can be
no progress toward fiscal reform until there is first political reform.
The 2/3 requirement must be eliminated and replaced by a simple
majority. The sooner this happens the better for all Californians.
Already, the CFT and its allies are moving forward on a ballot
proposition for next year which would, if passed, eliminate the 2/3
requirement. Our local should be very involved in this campaign the way
we were involved on the Prop. 92 campaign last fall. The fiscal health
of the state and education's future demand no less.
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