Search
Polls
Latest Forum Posts
| Taking a Knee unclebuck 15-11-08 13:51 |
| Re:Football unclebuck 07-10-08 15:24 |
| Re:Football unclebuck 02-10-08 12:59 |
Login Form
| OUR VOICE |
|
|
| Written by PI Editorial Staff | |
| Saturday, 19 January 2008 | |
|
Legislators should look beneath surface to find state budget savings Reacting spontaneously to a forecasted $14.5 billion state budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a 10 percent cut in state funding. He has presented the Legislature with a $141 billion spending plan filled with sweeping changes. Among them are the release of 22,000 state prison inmates, suspension of financing guarantees for public schools, closure of 43 state parks, elimination of dental care for Medi-Cal patients and the requirement that more parents on welfare find jobs. By this past weekend, the haste to endorse the across-the-board reduction in spending, and subsequently state services, had ebbed at the state Capitol. Though the Legislature has less than 40 days to adopt remedies to balance this year’s budget, which is out of whack by about $3 million, our representatives don’t seem too eager to craft a solution overnight. That’s because the Legislature has a split personality: The majority Democrats and defiant Republicans have different interests — ultra-liberal versus ultra-conservative ideas. For the betterment of all 37 million Californians, we urge the legislators and the governor to look for common denominators when drafting the emergency spending plans for 2008 and 2009. They should follow Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill’s recommendation to prioritize which programs are most critical for California’s future. Hill said Monday that to follow Schwarzenegger’s lead would leave programs “operating in a less-than-optimal manner and provide lower quality services to the public.” Instead of rushing to approve across-the-board cuts, will our legislators spend the necessary time to discover the real waste below the surface of the state budget? Democratic Assemblywoman Cathleen Galgiani, who has spent her adult life at the state Capitol either as a staff member or a legislator, is establishing a bipartisan study group to analyze the governor’s proposed budget line by line. Her working group on cost savings will join the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to review all of the recent Bureau of State Audits reports to identify savings. She will invite whistleblowers in state services to come forward with savings in their agencies. It’s a monotonous and monumental task, but there is a huge benefit — our political representatives will be able to make intelligent decisions about which state services and programs to keep and which to cut, so when “happy days are here again” in California, the Legislature and governor won’t make the same mistake of allocating money to wasteful government.
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 194 Comments
(0)
|
Subscribe to this comment's feed