California Budget Sees Cuts in Education and Health Care

Just prior to the beginning of the new fiscal year, Governor Jerry Brown (Democrat) of California inked a budget – a one-time package that is quite rare. It includes emergency plans to make deeper spending cuts in education funds if the optimistic predictions of the economy fail to materialize.

Brown signed funds amounting to $86 billion under the general spending category. It included cuts in spending and hikes in fees after the majority Democrats gave the nod; the Republicans did not support it. Vetoes were issued to cut costs on spending on local transit as well as spending on trial court.

The cuts in the budget pertain to – welfare, higher education, health care for the indigent and handicapped, home supportive services and also state parks; core functions of the administration has been targeted in these cuts. Brown explained that since 1972-73 this is the lowest spending under the category of general funds.

There is some optimism in the budget as it hopes that revenue from taxes will touch nearly $12 billion higher in forthcoming fiscal year than what had been projected last January because of the rich prospering.

Ana Matosantos, the finance director of Brown said that the government felt the projection was feasible because the cash flow had increased more than the revenue projections. This was primarily due to increase in income of the upper-income group.

If revenue collections do not touch $2 billion then the schools districts would have to decrease their school year. The community colleges would have to face further cuts apart from what has already been prescribed in this new budget. If revenues fail to reach $1 billion then there would be cuts in spending for universities, libraries and programmes pertaining to in-home support etc.

A provision was inserted by the Democrats that would not allow school districts from retrenching teachers. President of the Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (Democrat/Sacramento) said, “If the claim is that we went out of our way to avoid further additional teacher layoffs – guilty”.

The irony was that the legislators had the motive of reaching a deal because it was this same law that would put brakes on their own salaries and expenses pertaining to living until a balanced budget were passed. This penalty would have cost them each about $5,000 but save the taxpayers over a period of 12 days $583,200.