California Budget

The telephone rang early that morning while Chris Rosales was in the shower, so the news reached him by way of an urgent message. When the UC Irvine swimmer listened to his answering machine, he heard his coach asking him to call back as soon as possible. "That didn't sound good," Rosales said. "I knew something was up." The California budget crisis has put state colleges and universities under tremendous pressure to cut spending.

A state budget cycle, like a "Terminator" movie, is normally best understood in one of two ways: Either as a stand-alone feature with a constant cast of characters and a beginning, a middle and an end; or as an episode in a longer story arc whose true meaning the audience grasps only after sitting through the whole series and then talking it over with friends and strangers. But the California budget cycle that just ended ... no, that's not right ...

In another failed bid to win Republican support for the California budget, Assembly Democrats added millions of dollars for rural police to the plan and a few of them even engaged in a clandestine operation. Assemblyman Mike Briggs (R-Fresno) said he was floating along the Sacramento River in his houseboat Saturday afternoon when a speedboat pulled up next to him. "It looked like one of those James Bond boats carrying these guys with neckties," Briggs said.

As the California Legislature prepares for a showdown vote today on the state budget, welfare has emerged as a sticking point in passage of the $100-billion spending plan. Republicans, whose votes are needed for the requisite two-thirds passage, are complaining angrily that Democrats want to roll back welfare reform by making more people eligible. They point to a proposal that would exempt a recipient's first car, regardless of value, as proof that Democrats are bent on expanding welfare rolls.

Gov. Pete Wilson signed the new $75.4-billion state budget Friday but invoked his line-item veto authority as never before, surprising legislative leaders by slashing $1.5 billion from the spending plan. Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa said he considered walking out of a news conference that Wilson had convened to herald the budget signing. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) opted to stay away, saying, "I just had other stuff to do."

To all of the cynics who complain that government can't get anything right and that they can do a better job--this may be their best chance. Now, from the office of Gov. Pete Wilson, comes a new computer game called "Balancing the California Budget." It is loaded with enough color graphics, charts and statistics to make the governor's point that there are no easy answers.

State Treasurer Kathleen Brown returned from Wall Street on Wednesday to declare--in her role as Democratic candidate for his job--that there is only so much she can do in her current official capacity to "rescue" Republican Gov. Pete Wilson from the impact of a $7-billion cash flow problem.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a $130-billion budget Friday that raises sales and income taxes across the board for the first time in 17 years and slashes spending by one of the sharpest rates in modern California history. The governor's signature -- and additional line-item vetoes he made to funding for prisons and the offices of other statewide elected officials -- reduces spending from the state's main pool of tax dollars by 11% over the next 16 months.

The plan that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers approved last month to fill California's giant budget hole has already fallen out of balance with a projected $8-billion shortfall, the Legislature's nonpartisan budget analyst said Friday. After analyzing recent data showing rapidly rising unemployment and lower-than-expected economic growth, Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said the state is on track to have even less money than lawmakers anticipated in February.

California's proposed budget contains a major provision that would weaken air pollution regulations while saving the construction industry millions of dollars. The measure, largely overlooked in a public debate focused on taxes, would delay requirements for builders to retrofit bulldozers, scrapers and other soot-spewing equipment, slashing by 17% the emissions savings that health advocates had hoped to achieve by 2014. "There are people who will die because of this delay," said Mary D.