Like other governors, Schwarzenegger should be in the trenches, negotiating a realistic budget with legislative leaders. Democrats, with their own protectionist strategies, need to offer more give on the governor's proposals and remove the budget fences they've erected around sacred cows. Neither side can afford to please only its own special interests, mainly business on the governor's side and unions on the Democrats'.
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GOP Govs. Who Can Count
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday April 03, 2005 Home Edition Opinion Part M Page 4 Editorial Pages Desk 2 inches; 73 words Type of Material: Correction
GOP governors -- An editorial Wednesday on Republican governors' approaches to taxes and spending misstated California's bond rating history under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in saying that the state had "watched its bond rating plummet." Two of three major bond rating agencies sharply lowered the state's general obligation bond ratings in December 2003, the month after Schwarzenegger took office, but raised them in 2004 to about the levels that existed before he took office.
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More cooperation would give Schwarzenegger cover for a modest temporary tax increase. That could mean broadening the sales tax base from just goods to services such as auto repairs and legal fees. Or restoring the old 11% maximum state income tax bracket first set by Ronald Reagan in the late 1960s and reimposed by Pete Wilson during the recession of the early 1990s.
California has successfully used taxes to get past a slump twice in the last 40 years. Business will not flee to Nevada. Executives who take a long view want to see the state investing in better highways and transportation and turning out productive workers from its education system. That's the old California dream, which shouldn't be regarded as dead and buried.
