In a televised press conference this morning, Gov. Jerry Brown revealed his new plan to untangle the ever-grimmer Caliifornia state budget — “a pretzel palace of incredible complexity,” as he memorably characterized it.
Why a new plan? Because it turns out that the apocalyptic budget proposal he introduced early in the year wasn’t quite apocalyptic enough. Over the last couple of months, the budget deficit has widened much more dramatically than the governor’s people had previously foreseen, thanks to miserable income tax returns and court stoppage of several of their earlier budget-slashing cuts.
I try to keep at least a little bit conversant in Sacramentese, but let’s face it: If you want the best skinny on what fresh hells budget-balancing is going to bring us you’re far better off communing with far more knowledgeable people at the Sacramento Bee or the LA Times or the Associated Press. In a word, the governor is proposing to slash the hell out of Medi-Cal, the state’s welfare-to-work program and in-home support for disabled persons. Oh, and he’s going to try to get agreement for an across-the-board 5 percent pay cut for all state employees across the board, from now until the end of time.
And this is all assuming that the governor’s fall tax measures pass. If they do not pass, things will be much, much worse, especially for education.
During the press conference Brown took a preemptive swipe at the presumptive opponents of those measures — one of which would up the state sales tax by a quarter of a point, the other which would hike income tax rates on the superrich. “There are ideologues who say government is an abstraction that you can just eviscerate with no effects in the real world,” he said. “Well, that isn’t true.”
All in all, our governor seems coolly prepared to play chicken with the no-new-taxers right up to the brink. It’s all very reminiscent of this This American Life segment from a few months ago, when the government of Colorado Springs basically shut everything down when voters didn’t come through in the face of a similar crisis. Required listening:
Below: The full summary of Gov. Brown’s most recent budget revision, helpfully Scribd by the Sacramento Bee.
CLICK TO MANAGE