Fiscal Crisis

Re "It's Up to Supervisors," Ventura County editorials, Dec. 5. I applaud your editorial calling for Auditor-Controller Tom Mahon's resignation. While blame for the current fiscal crisis in Ventura County does not belong to Mahon alone, he must be held accountable for not performing his duty to disclose the magnitude of these problems until forced to by the resignation of Chief Administrative Officer David L. Baker. While Mahon's performance in this aspect of his job was bad enough, what I really find outrageous is the rash of contradictory statements by Mahon that appeared daily in the newspapers last week, particularly in regard to making payroll for the county's employees.

Bell's finances have worsened considerably since its infamous corruption scandal, leaving the city unable to refund millions of dollars in taxes illegally levied on residents and businesses, an audit released Wednesday shows. The report by the state controller paints a troubling picture of the small southeast Los Angeles County city's efforts to recover from the 2010 scandal, which resulted in felony convictions against five former City Council members. The city's longtime city manager, Robert Rizzo, faces trial on corruption charges later this year.

Three years after a massive corruption scandal, Bell's finances have worsen considerably and the city doesn't have the money to refund millions of dollars in taxes illegally levied on residents, according to a state audit released Wednesday. Bell currently has a negative cash balance, caused in part by the city's move to stop collecting the illegal taxes, the state controller's office found. Bell promised to refund more than $3 million in overpaid taxes to residents and busineses, but auditors found that the city has not done so. "The city is facing significant fiscal challenges that, if left unresolved, could lead to a fiscal crisis," the audit found.

Three years after a massive corruption scandal, Bell's finances have worsen considerably and the city doesn't have the money to refund millions of dollars in taxes illegally levied on residents, according to a state audit released Wednesday. Bell currently has a negative cash balance, caused in part by the city's move to stop collecting the illegal taxes, the state controller's office found. Bell promised to refund more than $3 million in overpaid taxes to residents and busineses, but auditors found that the city has not done so. "The city is facing significant fiscal challenges that, if left unresolved, could lead to a fiscal crisis," the audit found.

The U.S. confronts not one but two economic challenges: Its worst recession since the Depression and a growing imbalance between federal spending and revenues that makes its underlying fiscal policy unsustainable. To get the economy going, the Obama administration and Congress have committed trillions of dollars to bailouts of the financial and automobile industries and to a stimulus package of tax cuts and government spending.

Here's what is most maddening about the "Perils of Pauline" fiscal crises that President Obama and Congress have led us into during the last year: Both sides have known from the beginning what the final deals would look like, but neither side has been willing to budge before it had to. Take the current dust-up over sequestration. If you listen closely to Obama and leading members of both parties in the Senate, you'll find that they've already reached a rough consensus about how to shrink the federal deficit in a smarter way. They'll cut the same amount, but they'll spread it around differently and perhaps delay some of the cuts.

Economic ministers from the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Hanoi said they were close to an agreement to fight the region's economic crisis. They still must get approval from home before working out the final details. The proposals then will be offered for approval by the countries' leaders at the group's summit in Vietnam this week. Philippine Trade Secretary Jose Pardo said officials must determine the impact of any incentives for foreign investment or cuts in tariffs.

The financially troubled Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra has survived a recent monetary crisis and will give its 1985-86 season as scheduled, The Times learned Thursday. Thanks in part to a pass-the-hat campaign among the ensemble's board members, "a significant portion" of an accumulated $180,000 deficit had been raised, executive director Robert Elias said. "We just couldn't conceive of the orchestra folding."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warned Friday that the state remained deep in fiscal crisis and proposed steep reductions in almost every major government program, but many lawmakers quickly dismissed his ideas as stale and vowed to push for alternatives such as tax hikes. His proposal, aimed at closing a $19.9-billion gap, and the response to it foreshadow another year of paralysis in Sacramento as the governor and lawmakers struggle with the latest crippling shortfall. The new budget blueprint -- the governor's last before term limits force him from office -- comes after the state's epic financial problems have already become a target of ridicule around the world.

Last year, I had 18 students in a grades two and three combination class. At any time I could easily address every students' individual needs and provide the appropriate enrichment or remediation. It is now projected that I will have 32 students in my third-grade class in September. I hope all these children stay on board, as I would hate to leave any child behind. The solution to the state fiscal crisis shouldn't rest on the backs of students and educators. Cecile Boehlert Huntington Beach

The new leadership in Bell deserves credit for ejecting corrupt city leaders, but if additional problems aren't fixed, the potential for mismanagement and fiscal crisis remains high, state Controller John Chiang said. Chiang issued his final audit on Bell on Wednesday morning, nearly three years after a corruption scandal uncovered overpaid city leaders, overtaxed residents and other financial mismanagement. “Bell's new leadership deserves credit for changing the culture of city hall by emphasizing transparency and inviting more citizen participation in its decision-making,” said Chiang.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown is stepping back onto the world stage. After two years largely spent cloistered in California tending to the fiscal crisis, he starts a weeklong visit to China on Tuesday in a bid to reclaim the state's reputation as a global economic powerhouse and innovator. The visit will lack the glitz of Brown's travels as governor decades ago, with rock star companions and international paparazzi replaced by dozens of state bureaucrats and business officials.

In the weeks leading up to last Tuesday's election, voters in Los Angeles heard conflicting messages from city officials and candidates about Proposition A, a proposed half-cent increase in the sales tax. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Council President Herb Wesson and Police Chief Charlie Beck all argued that the city desperately needed the tax hike to avoid damaging cuts in public safety and other services. The candidates vying to take Villaraigosa's place in City Hall, however, insisted that the increase was the wrong way to solve the city's fiscal problems.

Here's what is most maddening about the "Perils of Pauline" fiscal crises that President Obama and Congress have led us into during the last year: Both sides have known from the beginning what the final deals would look like, but neither side has been willing to budge before it had to. Take the current dust-up over sequestration. If you listen closely to Obama and leading members of both parties in the Senate, you'll find that they've already reached a rough consensus about how to shrink the federal deficit in a smarter way. They'll cut the same amount, but they'll spread it around differently and perhaps delay some of the cuts.

In my Wednesday column , I wrote that President Obama and most leading members of Congress know what a solution to the fiscal crisis looks like; they just can't get there from here because they don't trust one another much. Obama is trying to change that by taking a dozen Republican senators to dinner Wednesday night at the neutral ground of Washington's elegant Jefferson Hotel, and by going to lunch in the Capitol with GOP Senate and House members beginning next week. The hope is that a little schmoozing will do the trick -- or at least end the silly notion that we wouldn't have political gridlock if Obama spent more time with Republicans on the golf course.

WASHINGTON - Listening to the political shouting match and seeing Washington lurch from one fiscal crisis to another, one might think the federal budget deficit is the economic equivalent of a giant meteor hurtling toward America, about to hit any day. The reality is quite different. In fact, the debt is probably not even the country's biggest economic challenge, most experts say, and certainly not the most urgent. The evidence shows that the country is on a course of spending and debt accumulation that could lead to serious trouble not today or tomorrow but probably 10 to 20 years down the road.

A former congressional candidate has begun another campaign, this time to put the spotlight on city officials as they grapple with the county's fiscal crisis. Irvine resident Gary Kingsbury, 43, who failed in a Democratic bid to unseat Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) in November, has formed Citizens for Public Responsibility. "The problem we see is that the city hasn't held one public meeting on this crisis since it started," Kingsbury said.

Angry state workers in Maine rallied Monday outside the Capitol, demanding paychecks and a state budget, after the governor shut down all non-essential services in a fiscal showdown with the Legislature. Connecticut's governor threatened to follow Maine's example. "We want to be paid! We want a budget!" shouted some of the estimated 200 idled Maine workers, who were held back from the office of Gov. John R. McKernan Jr. by two police officers.

WASHINGTON -- Reemerging as a party spokesman following a self-imposed post-election hiatus, Paul Ryan this weekend called upon Republicans to remain united against a president he sees as bent on "political conquest" in his second term. Ryan, in a pair of public appearances, said the GOP must continue to challenge President Obama on areas of principle but also be prepared to work with him on other areas. Notably, on NBC's "Meet The Press," he signaled he might be open to the president's push to expand background checks on gun purchases, but not other proposals the administration has put forward in the wake of the Newtown school shooting.

After the Music Stopped The Financial Crisis, the Response and the Work Ahead Alan Blinder Penguin Press: 496 pp., $29.95 "Obamanomics was an incoherent blur to most citizens - and a not very successful blur, at that," writes Alan Blinder in "After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response and the Work Ahead," a thoughtful attempt by one of the nation's top economists to puzzle through what happened in 2007-09 with the...