"The Legislature's chief budget analyst warned lawmakers Wednesday that an unexpected dip in tax revenues, along with a number of overly optimistic assumptions in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget, leaves the state facing
a much larger fiscal problem than the governor's spending plan reflects," reports Evan Halper in the Times.
"Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst
Elizabeth G. Hill, to whom lawmakers of both parties look for advice on fiscal matters, urged the Legislature to begin cutting programs now to keep California from plunging too far into the red.
"'The state still faces many major risks and pressures,' Hill said at a news conference where she released her analysis of the governor's budget plan. She projects that about $2 billion in tax revenue the governor's plan relies on to balance the fiscal 2007-08 budget won't be there.
"Officials in the Schwarzenegger administration said that the revenue dip may have been a fluke and that they have
yet to see convincing evidence of an economic slowdown."
"'The proposal the governor put before the Legislature in January is a roadmap to a balanced budget with no tax increases,' said Department of Finance spokesman
H.D. Palmer. '
We stand by that plan.' He said the administration remains optimistic that the plan would leave California with a $2.1-billion surplus."
The U-T's Ed Mendel reports that the Hill
would limit student fee increases proposed in the budget. "The analyst said the governor's proposal for fee increases of 10 percent at California State Universities and 7 percent at the University of California would increase the share of total university costs paid by students.
"Hill recommended a 2.4 percent fee increase, which would maintain the share of university costs covered by student fees in the current budget. She also urged lawmakers to adopt a policy that links future fee increases to a fixed share of total costs.
"'It would promote consistency by routinely adjusting fee levels such that non-needy students pay the same share of cost over time,' Hill said in an analysis of the $143.4 billion state budget proposed by the governor.
"Under the governor's proposal, the annual CSU undergraduate student fee of $2,520 would increase $252 and the UC fee of $6,141 would increase $430. Hill would lower the increases to $60 for CSU and $147 for UC."
The Bee's Steve Weigand
predicts Hill's recommendations won't be followed. "Much of what Hill said will be ignored. Her office's apolitical nature means it will make recommendations that make sense from the standpoint of good government but are nonsensical from the standpoint of political expediency -- and guess which standpoint trumps the other among elected officials?
"Besides, it's hard to get excited about recommendations concerning a process that to the average Californian might as well be conducted in Sanskrit.
"Now, if she had recommended something like eliminating fourth grade to save education money, or having people put buckets in their yards in lieu of building dams, I would have paid more attention.
"And maybe understood some of it."
CW's Malcolm Maclachlan reports on the
upcoming deadline for lobbyists to find authors for their bills.
In fact, over half of the thousands of bills the Counsel's 80 or so lawyers review each year do not originate with legislators--instead, they go looking for them.
"I've been in every legislative office in the Capitol," lobbyist
Matt Gray said last week.
"Among other ideas, Gray has been pushing a measure that would confiscate any money minors make if they use a fake ID in order to appear in an adult video.
"In each case, they have gotten the legal review that would be required for them to become California law; often, Counsel's lawyers take an idea that has merely been described and draft legislation.
"
What these bills don't have is the gold-colored backing detailing which legislators have signed on as authors and co-authors. This piece of paper will physically follow the bill for it's entire legislative life until it becomes law or not."
Cosmo Garvin finds the one remaining legislator who is still receiving a pension under the old legislative retirement system.
"It's
Mervyn Dymally. He first was elected to the Assembly in 1963, served as a state senator and a term as lieutenant governor before moving on to the U.S. Congress. Since he returned to the Assembly in 2002, and has lots of time on his term-limits meter, he's still eligible to participate in the LRS."
"Proposition 140 only kicked legislators off of the retirement rolls. It didn't take the benefit away from constitutional officers, or statutory officers like the clerk of Assembly or secretary of the Senate. So even newly elected statewide officers, like Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, can join if they want to.
And, in 1991, several incumbent legislators took Proposition 140 to the California Supreme Court, arguing that stripping sitting legislators of their retirement benefits was unconstitutional. The court agreed, so anybody elected prior to November 1, 1990, was grandfathered in.
"California prisons may be jampacked to the point of federal judges slamming the door shut to new inmates, but the Legislative Analyst's Office says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's corrections proposals
could leave the state with the equivalent of six empty new prisons by 2012," writes Andy Furillo in the Bee.
"In its annual budget review released Wednesday, the LAO reported that Schwarzenegger's prison construction plans would add about 30,000 beds while his proposed sentencing and parole changes would reduce the prison population by 25,000 in five years, resulting in a surplus of 32,000 beds.
"The report said that the empty beds would be enough to fill six prisons by today's standards and that it would take eight to 11 years for the state's judges to sentence enough inmates to fill them.
"'In our view, it would not be wise to use state resources to build excessive prison capacity, which is likely to remain unused for such a long period,' the LAO report said.
"California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman
Oscar Hidalgo said the LAO report was flawed because it did not take into consideration the total picture of prison overcrowding in the state, where 172,000 inmates are living in space designed for half that many and 16,000 of them live in gyms, day rooms and classrooms. Hidalgo said the report considered only the emergency housing units as overcrowded, not the double-bunked cells that house the bulk of state prisoners."
Dan Weintraub
looks at the conflict between lawmakers and the Transportation Commission. "There may be a way out of this pickle. The commission's first list of projects would cost about $2.8 billion. But the bond set aside $4.5 billion for projects of this kind, with the intent that the money go out the door by March 1. That leaves $1.7 billion still on the table to deal with the objections the politicians are raising this week.
"Schwarzenegger has asked the commission, whose members he appoints, to spend all of the money available. But the projects he said he thinks are worthy would cost another $2.3 billion. That's $700 million more than the commission has left in the till at this point, unless it rejects some of its staff's other recommendations.
"Something has to give. The politicians overpromised during last year's campaign. But the biggest public works bond in the nation's history ought to have enough money in it to satisfy even their voracious appetites."
George Skelton writes that L.A. officials are
correct to challenge the allocation on transportation bond dollars. "There cannot be a complete disconnect between campaign promises and a politically tone-deaf bureaucracy. Or the next significant number will be zero: the number of statewide bonds approved in the future."
"State and local officials will unveil proposed legislation today
making it a crime to dump hospital patients on the streets, part of a new push by authorities who are investigating 55 cases of alleged dumping on L.A.'s skid row alone," report Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein in the Times.
"The move comes after a string of such incidents — including one involving a paraplegic man wearing a colostomy bag who was left in a skid row gutter — generated widespread outrage.
"Authorities have struggled to build cases against those accused of doing the dumping, in part because there is no state law that expressly prohibits leaving patients on the streets.
"The Los Angeles city attorney has filed criminal charges against just one hospital, Kaiser Permanente, saying the dumping of a homeless woman on skid row in 2006 amounted to false imprisonment. That legal strategy, however, has never been tested in court, and some legal experts question whether it will hold up."
"San Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsom gave his first sit-down interview in the wake of his City Hall sex scandal Wednesday, during which he said
he doesn't know if he's an alcoholic and that rumors about him using cocaine are 'absolutely laughable.'"In an interview with CBS 5-TV, Newsom said he is attending rehab at the Delancey Street Foundation nearly every night 'for a number of hours' for his drinking, which he said had 'got in the way.'
"'I don't need to drink wine, and I don't think it's helpful right now,' he said during the interview. 'I need more clarity. I need more focus.'
"Newsom has repeatedly dodged questions from reporters about an affair he had with his former appointments secretary, who is married to the mayor's former campaign manager. After publicly apologizing for the affair earlier this month, Newsom also admitted he had a drinking problem and would seek treatment.
"On Wednesday, Newsom told the television station that in the aftermath of the scandal
he has stopped reading newspapers and watching the news."He called
Alex Tourk, his former campaign manager who abruptly resigned after learning the mayor had had an affair with his wife, a 'great friend' and said the affair 1 1/2 years ago with
Ruby Rippey-Tourk is 'something I'll for the rest of my life regret.'"
