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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (57505)	7/3/2009 10:08:20 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

With the depression in property values, isn't Prop 13 a moot point now, at least for the time being. The revenues from other sources such as income, sales etc. have fallen significantly thereby contributing to the huge shortfall. We should have saved up during the boom years in order to avoid the current situation. My city has a law that every year we need to put aside 1% of the revenues for a rainy day fund. Furthermore, we cannot have deficit budget. And the city is doing well. I think that California should adopt this model.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (57505)	7/3/2009 10:58:21 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 149317

Dan Walters: Budget drills show why California needs reform dwalters@sacbee.com Published Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009 While waiting for the state Senate to convene Monday, the California Channel, a public affairs television service, filled in by broadcasting a recent conference on the burgeoning movement to fundamentally overhaul California's dysfunctional state government. When the Senate convened, it promptly demonstrated why such reform is desperately needed by spending – wasting, really – a couple of hours debating a Democratic budget plan that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had already pledged to veto, even though the state was 36 hours away from a fiscal meltdown. "I will veto any majority vote tax increase bill that punishes taxpayers for Sacramento's failure to live within its means," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "The Legislature will have a difficult time explaining to Californians why they are running floor drills the day before our budget deadline." "Drills" are Capitol jargon for symbolic exercises that don't do anything, and Monday's Senate session qualified, as did one later in the day to take up some bills that Republican senators, whose votes were needed for passage, had already rejected. The sessions, following a similar Assembly exercise that began late Sunday and didn't end until after midnight, were supposedly aimed at holding Schwarzenegger's feet to the political fire, either forcing him to sign the bills, including those that increase taxes, or be held responsible when the state enters a new fiscal year on Wednesday without a revised budget in place. Although a 2009-10 budget was passed in February, the deteriorating economy and voter rejection of significant portions at a May 19 election opened up a new hole that's at least $20 billion. And unless it's filled with more spending cuts or revenues, Controller John Chiang says he will begin paying some state bills with IOUs Wednesday because of a cash flow shortfall. It's evident now that the Legislature's much-vaunted post-May 19 process for fashioning a new budget was a colossal waste of time. In the end, Democrats just wrote a budget in secret, then tried to jam it down the Republicans' throats. By squandering so much time working on bills that Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators had already declared dead on arrival, Democratic leaders were, inadvertently perhaps, demonstrating why California will never solve its perpetual budget crisis, or those involving water, education and myriad other issues, until it changes its political culture. That's not to say that Schwarzenegger and Republicans are blameless. They are full participants in what the governor calls "kabuki," the stylized Japanese theater, posturing rather than doing the tough work of bringing income and outgo into balance. We desperately need to empower those we elect to make decisions and then hold them strictly accountable for those decisions. Instead, we have a system that does precisely the opposite and encourages the buck-passing that was on display Monday. sacbee.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (57505)	7/3/2009 11:00:52 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

Dan Walters: Schwarzenegger shares blame on chronic deficits dwalters@sacbee.com Published Friday, Jul. 03, 2009 Remember the Arnold Schwarzenegger who, exactly five years ago, denounced state legislators as "girlie men" beholden to unions because they failed to pass a state budget? He's back, sensing that time is running out on his 2003 campaign promise to stop "crazy deficit spending." "I was sent to Sacramento to fix the broken system," Schwarzenegger said Thursday, demanding that the Legislature close a budget deficit without new taxes. The Republican governor accused lawmakers – implicitly the Legislature's dominant Democrats – of ignoring "waste, fraud and abuse," adding a phrase reminiscent of his famous "girlie man" epithet: "They're just beholden to the unions and the special interests." Schwarzenegger's renewed campaign shifted into high gear this week after the Legislature once again stalemated over how to bridge the yawning budget gap. "The legislators' failure to act on those proposals sent a message to the California voters and to the taxpayers that says we want you to make the sacrifices but we in Sacramento don't want to make any sacrifices whatsoever," Schwarzenegger said Wednesday as a new fiscal year began. "Protecting the special interests who benefit from our dysfunctional system was more important to the Legislature than protecting the taxpayers and dealing with the entire $24 billion deficit." The governor and his advisers have evidently concluded that the huge deficit – now pegged at $26.3 billion – and the issuance of state IOUs to some creditors may provide impetus for deep-seated budget changes not only to close the current shortfall but also to mitigate future deficits. It's classic wedge politics, attacking a Legislature whose public esteem stands at a historic low level and drawing a contrast between the economic hardships afflicting ordinary Californians and public employees whose unions are closely allied with Democratic lawmakers. Pointedly, one of Schwarzenegger's "reforms" would roll back for future employees the juicy pension benefits that the Legislature and his predecessor, Gray Davis, enacted in 1999 at the behest of those unions. Another would affect the In-Home Supportive Services program that now has 300,000 unionized workers due to changes in the law also made during the Davis regime. If Schwarzenegger's new old crusade is, to quote Yogi Berra, "déjà vu all over again," one should also remember that he deserves much of the onus for failing to close the state's chronic deficits. Repeatedly, especially during his first months in office and later when running for re-election, he took the easy way out – cutting taxes by billions of dollars, backing off a tough spending limit, unilaterally adding spending to placate Democrats and blowing through a one-time surge in revenues. It's commendable that Schwarzenegger is now willing to make tough decisions to fix California's fiscal mess – if, indeed, he is – but he could have done it much sooner and avoided much of the current angst. sacbee.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (57505)	7/8/2009 12:34:07 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

One major challenge: There is no roadmap for changing Prop. 13. While the measure inspired a popular revolt against property taxes in the years after it was enacted, no other state has the same mix of property tax limits and the two-thirds majority required to pass budgets and increase taxes. Unfortunately, we may be joining CA. There is a local winger who has tried for ten years to unend taxes in this state. He managed to get one initiative passed but the rest have either been voted down or were not constitutional or he did not have enough signatures. Unfortunately, he has come up with a new initiative for this fall that apparently is constitutional and has enough signatures. It will freeze state revenues at a particular level and whenever revenues exceed that level, taxes must be rolled back automatically. And because of the Bush recession and the hardships it is causing, the sucker may get his way this time. It makes me sick. While Sexton and a few other analysts think the state's current crisis may provide a brief window of discussion, some of them wonder if there is the political will to do more than pay lip service to the stream of suggestions for fixing the state's financial mess. I hate to be negative but I don't think it has the political will.