In February, Assemblymembers Mariko Yamada and Bob Blumenfield (D-San Fernando Valley), Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, announced their sponsorship of legislation that would make the Community Based Adult Services (CBAS) program permanent.
However, the legislation has proven to be troublesome. A similar bill was vetoed back in 2011.
Last week the governor’s office announced a budget that he argued would roughly be in balance. “This budget provides long-term fiscal stability on a level that California has not enjoyed in more than a decade,” the governor claimed.
For those caught off-guard by this news, perhaps they shouldn’t have been, as it was in line with the analysis from the LAO (Legislative Analyst’s Office) back in November 2012.
Governor Jerry Brown announced on Thursday that he is putting forth a balance budget “that boosts investment in education, implements health care reform and keeps California on a long-term path to fiscal stability. This budget builds on the work of the last two years to eliminate the ongoing deficit.”
“The budget cuts made in the last two years and the passage of Proposition 30 make it possible to both live within our means and to increase funding for education,” said Governor Brown.
Last year, California ended Redevelopment as a way for local government to use public monies that would go for redevelopment and other major infrastructure repair projects.
Last week marked the beginning of the new legislative session and Senator Lois Wolk introduced SB 33, a measure which would “update Infrastructure Financing District law, to make it a useful tool to help cities maintain, repair, and rebuild critical infrastructure and create economic development in their communities.”
Critics on Both Sides Blast the Deal which Rolls Back 3% at 50 But Only For New Employees –Governor Brown and Democratic leaders on Tuesday outlined their compromise proposal for what they are calling “a sweeping pension reform agreement that saves billions of taxpayer dollars by capping benefits, increasing the retirement age, stopping abusive practices and requiring state employees to pay at least half of their pension costs.”
“These reforms make fundamental changes that rein in costs and help to ensure that our public retirement system is sustainable for the long term. These reforms require sacrifice from public employees and represent a significant step forward,” said Governor Brown.
While cities and local government attempt to dig themselves out of self-inflicted holes, the legislature is threatening to makes matters worse by extending the statute of limitations for a presumptive death benefit claim filed on behalf of firefighters or peace officers, at a detrimental fiscal consequence for employers.
AB 2451, sponsored by Speaker John Pérez would eliminate the 4 ½ year statute of limitations on work-related death benefits for public safety employees who die of diseases presumed by law to be job-related. Opponents fear that there would be no limitation under the law “on the period of time between the employee’s exposure to and presumable death from heart disease, cancer, tuberculosis or blood borne pathogens.”
If the governor’s tax measure does not pass this fall, local school districts like Davis figure to be hammered by automatic trigger cuts. For Davis that means the loss of about 3.5 million dollars in funding which, combined with the expiration of Measure A and the increased costs of special education, puts Davis in a catastrophic hole at negative 7.5 million dollars.
A Field Poll released today shows that the voters are largely mixed on the latest round of state cuts, with 37 percent believing the cuts went too far, 28% that they did not go far enough and 24% believing they are just right.
As local communities like Davis face devastating budget cuts, protracted labor strife, and even bankruptcy due to a retirement pension crisis, leaders in Sacramento are moving closer but have failed to reach an agreement on pension reform.
Last February the governor unveiled the statutory and constitutional language to implement the 12-point pension reform plan he presented last October.
The attorney general identified deceptive practices regarding loan modifications, foreclosures occurring due to the servicer’s failure to properly process paperwork, and the use of incomplete paperwork to process foreclosures in both judicial and non-judicial foreclosure cases.
Given the lightning rod that has developed for student protests, one would think that more care would be taken. But the lesson that we learned this week is that neither prudence nor decency seem to have a place when it comes to the decisions made by the CSU Trustees, who follow the actions of UC from late last fall.
In a meeting this week with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Editorial Board, Governor Brown threw down the gauntlet, arguing that his tax initiative was the only one that would solve the state’s fiscal crisis and increase funding to schools and higher education.
The Chronicle reported, “He said that one of the other tax proposals, known as the millionaires tax, might poll well because it would hit the wealthiest Californians and dedicate money almost exclusively to education, but that it fails to consider the effect of Proposition 98 – the state’s education funding guarantee – and amounts to ‘ballot-box budgeting’ that creates more problems than it solves.”
A few days ago, Republican Senators Bill Emmerson (Hemet), Tom Berryhill (Modesto), Anthony Cannella (Ceres) and Tom Harman (Huntington Beach) wrote an op-ed in the LA Times, pushing for their public employee pension reform legislation.
They discussed Senate Constitutional Amendment 13, which “resulted from last year’s failed negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown over the reforms we sought and that California desperately needs — including pension reform.”
Occupy Movement Blasts the Deal and Calls For Moratorium on ForeclosureKamala Harris last week had a day many politicians dream of: a headline-making announcement that delivers a large amount of money to constituents. Symbolically, the attorney general’s foreclosure settlement announcement and her role in shaping the out-of-court mortgage-abuse settlement with five huge home loan banks – Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial – marked a huge victory for the little guy in a sea of turmoil and unsettledness.
On the other hand, there are more questions than answers at this point. As Peter Schrag, the venerable columnist now writing for the California Progress Report noted, “California Attorney General Kamala Harris deserves at least some of the self-congratulation she heaped on herself when the big national mortgage foreclosure deal was announced last week.”
Angry Response From Public Employees to the Governor’s PlanOn Thursday, Governor Jerry Brown unveiled the statutory and constitutional language to implement the 12-point pension reform plan he presented last October.
“These major reforms for state and local pension systems will improve their long-term sustainability while providing employees a fair retirement,” the governor wrote. “These reforms also will end system-wide abuses and reduce taxpayer costs by billions of dollars over the long term.”
Move Puts Further Pressure on CalPERS to Do LikewiseIn a move with huge implications, the governing board of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), the pension fund for teachers, lowered their investment return assumption from 7.75 percent to 7.5 percent.
According to a release on Thursday, “The change is part of a four-year experience analysis that sets the parameters for determining the financial health of the system.”
However Other Groups Continuing to Back Millionaire’s TaxGovernor Brown has had to fight not only the right on his tax initiative, but his own base in the form of at least two competing measures. This week, however, the governor gained key support as the California Teacher’s Association’s State Council of Education, comprised of 800 elected educators from across the state, endorsed the governor’s tax plan at their quarterly meeting in Los Angeles on Sunday.
“Educators know that California cannot continue to cut its way out of ongoing budget problems. We also know that not everyone in California is paying their fair share, and that’s why we are supporting the governor’s tax proposal, which taxes the wealthiest Californians in order to bring additional revenue to our schools, colleges and other essential public services,” Dean Vogel, president of the CTA and a Davis resident said in a statement on Sunday.
There is little doubt that Governor Jerry Brown, who has struggled to get a handle on the budget, will applaud the findings in a recent PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) poll that shows 68 percent of likely voters (and 72 percent of all adults) favor the his tax proposal.How strong is that support? Even Republicans are found to be slightly more likely to favor (53%) than oppose it (46%).
“California is on the mend,” Governor Brown began his State of the State address, arguing that because of last year’s actions, “we shrunk state government, reduced our borrowing costs and transferred key functions to local government, closer to the people. The result is a problem one-fourth as large as the one we confronted last year.”
“California has problems but rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated,” the governor said.
A Look at Education in Governor Brown’s Budget ProposalThe Vanguard is going to, over the next week or so, analyze several critical areas of the budget. We begin where we have been for the last several years – looking at K-12 education. No area of the budget has been hammered harder than education.
On a local level, the continuing education cuts have meant that the school district has had to implement two additional parcel tax measures in 2008 and 2011 in order to keep funding relatively stable.
There is a nine billion dollar hole that the state is going to have to fill. How it chooses to fill it will depend more on the decision of voters than it will on the legislators.