Thread: BANKRUPT - California Declares Fiscal Emergency

California governor declares fiscal emergency



SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Jan 20, 2011 10:09pm EST

(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of fiscal emergency on Thursday for the government of the most populous U.S. state to press lawmakers to tackle its $25.4 billion budget gap.

Democrat Brown's declaration follows a similar one made last month by his predecessor, former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Democrats who control the legislature declined to act on Schwarzenegger's declaration, saying they would instead wait to work on budget matters with Brown, who served two terms as California's governor in the 1970s and 1980s.

Brown was sworn in to his third term early this month and has presented lawmakers with a plan to balance the state's books with $12.5 billion in spending cuts and revenue from tax extensions that voters must first approve.

Brown has said he wants lawmakers to act on his plan by March. His fiscal emergency declaration is meant to underscore that target, a spokeswoman said.

Brown's declaration, which is largely procedural, says it affirms Schwarzenegger's December declaration, giving lawmakers 45 days to address the state's fiscal troubles.

The 72-year-old governor also wants the legislature to back a ballot measure for a special election in June that would ask voters to extend tax increases expiring this year to help fill the state budget's shortfall.
Brown needs a handful of Republican votes to put the measure to voters. Republican leaders in the legislature have said they doubt those votes will come.

By contrast, the state senate president pro tem, Darrell Steinberg, told Reuters on Thursday he is backing Brown's budget plan and that he would press other lawmakers to do so as well: "I think the Brown framework is the right framework ... We intend to meet the March deadline."

(Reporting by Jim Christie; Editing by Gary Hill)

California governor declares fiscal emergency | Reuters

Californians have toiled in vain for years to turn the fiscal tide around in their state, only to be met at the courthouse by a single globalist judge who overturned countless state referendums sign(ed) by tens of millions of legal citizens trying to save their state.

California is PROOF of what will happen when a state is literally occupied by millions of illegal aliens.

The City of Angels is a shining example of how illegal immigration utterly destroys an economy, and a state.

"We had ten years of NWO RINOS running the Republican Party and look where its got us...."

It doesn't matter which party the governor is from as both sides cater to illegals. If the government enforced our immigration laws then many states would not have the problems they have as a large percentage of the costs come from illegals and their anchor babies. Just the educations system and healthcare for illegals alone cost millions. Then add other government social programs and it is no wonder they are bankrupt.

RELATED

Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants $600 MILLION Per Year in L.A. County

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-225111.html

If brown really wanted to save money he wouldn't have signed the california dream act. I won't support any thing this guy brings to the table F him

I live in SoCa and I've seen this coming for 30 years! Too little too late. Maybe, just maybe, this state will need to see a total collapse until the government has no other choice to enforce the illegal immigration manifistation. Brown can tax the hell out of us, but as long as births of illegals continue, the ship will sink even further into the abyss. It seems obvious that California will be the model state of what will happen to the rest of the country if the government continues to give rights and our money to people who not suppose to be here. This year will be the breaking point, and we soon shall see where the cards will fall .

The Shyster is not cutting spending by 12 billion. He's going to borrow 4 billion from other state funds. As for the remaining 8 billion he says he going to cut don't believe it. At least some of that will be the elimination of scheduled increases.

Justthatguy said:

The Shyster is not cutting spending by 12 billion. He's going to borrow 4 billion from other state funds.

Yes, heard that as well. Heard this money is suppose to go to the cities for infrastructure so some city leaders are not happy needless to say.

Come on media, do some investigative reporting, don't just quote what politicians say and print it as if it is fact.

Jan. 20, 2011

Calif. budget sure to cut work force, but how much is unknown

By JON ORTIZ - McClatchy Newspapers

SACRAMENTO, Calif. SACRAMENTO, Calif.-Gov. Jerry Brown hasn't said it outright, but it's clear that California's state government will have fewer employees a year from now.

How many fewer? Brown's 2011-12 budget estimates a 2 percent decline in the state work force under the executive branch, mostly in the state prison and parole department.

But there are other job cuts - among the state's firefighter corps and in health and human services, for example - that depend on a complex interplay of state and local decisions. Brown wants to move some of the work in those departments from state to local control.

http://www.sacbee.com/

"It's a fuzzy picture," said former state Finance Department Director Mike Genest, who now heads his own government finance consulting firm. "It's not clear what will be happening with the size of the state work force."

Unlike his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new state employer-in-chief hasn't called for across-the-board cuts in the size or cost of the bureaucracy.

Brown has said that state workers in six unions without contracts, a total of 63,000 employees, need to accept cuts to their take-home pay equal to $308 million next year. That's an average $407 a month each.

Brown wants to leave the details to collective bargaining.

"I'm sure there will be resistance," he said at his Jan. 10 budget news conference, "but that's what collective bargaining is all about, a back-and-forth."

That's a marked contrast to Schwarzenegger's policies.

When the Legislature struggled to come up with budget fixes two years ago, Schwarzenegger issued layoff warnings to about 29,000 state workers with an edict to eliminate roughly 10 percent of state jobs, across the board.

The mass layoffs didn't happen. Instead, Schwarzenegger furloughed most of the 230,000 state workers under his control. Later, reacting to another budget crunch, Schwarzenegger also told all departments to cut their operating budgets by 5 percent, no exceptions.

Genest, who worked for Schwarzenegger, called such indiscriminate policies "sloppy" and politically driven.

"You hear it all the time: 'We're going to become more efficient,'" Genest said. "'We'll keep every promise to everyone, just do it all with fewer people.' And government just limps along."

Instead of focusing on cutting employee costs, Brown has suggested consolidating departments, shrinking programs, ending others or transferring some to local governments along with the money to operate them. The impact on state workers would flow from those policies.

"That's pretty much the opposite of what we were doing in the previous administration," Genest said.

Most of the jobs cut in Brown's budget come from prisons and parole. The Division of Juvenile Justice would eliminate 4,000 line jobs by shifting the 1,600 violent offenders it incarcerates to local departments by 2014.

An unspecified number of related jobs at corrections headquarters would eventually disappear, too. "Ultimately this will translate to hundreds of state positions being eliminated," Brown's proposal says.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association said in a recent letter to its board that officials of the prison and parole officers union have offered cost-cutting alternatives they hope will "supplant many of these initial proposals."

Brown's budget also cuts $31 million next year by cutting the number of firefighters per fire engine from four to three, which was the state's policy until 2003.

It also assumes the state will redraw fire protection responsibilities so that local fire departments take on more acreage. But the cost savings and cuts in state jobs depend on how much land state Board of Forestry declares the local departments should handle.

Brown proposes to "eventually" cut state jobs by 25 percent in the dozen departments in the state Health and Human Services Agency as it shifts some responsibilities to local governments.

If voters don't approve tax increases and extensions to close half of California's $26.4 billion budget gap, that goal would surely move up and expand. Brown said earlier this month that without the taxes "you can take this (the budget cuts) and multiply by two."

State workers in danger of layoff can move to other open jobs in the state or "bump" those with less seniority. California's serial fiscal crises in the past few years prompted Schwarzenegger to sweep the bureaucracy of open positions in the budget to save money.

Now it's more likely that, when state layoff warnings go out in the future, real people - not empty job slots - will disappear.

"Schwarzenegger cleared out a lot of the low-hanging fruit," said Michael Shires, a Pepperdine University expert on California's budget and state employee costs, "and even some of the fruit hanging further up the tree."

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/01 ... z1BjJG97d0