India has its sacred cow.
California has its sacred state worker.
The most glaring aspect of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget is that it fails to cut to what ails California - bloated expectations that have created a bloated bureaucracy.
Save for a handful of state employees not represented by collective bargaining that could get 10 percent pay cuts, not a single state employee is in jeopardy. It is because the third rail of Sacramento politics - the state employee groups - are not targeted to have their ranks pruned. There are 237,576 active state employees being paid $1.4 billion in wages alone each year according to the California State Controller’s Office.
In the past two years the ranks of state employees hasn’t shrunk. Also a number of “retirees” are hired as temp workers to fill positions they vacated.
It is not as much about the salaries that could be saved but also about the redundant regulations and massive paper chase that could be reduced or eliminated.
This all points to one painfully obvious truth - state government will not reinvent itself and as a result it is the ultimate albatross around the collective necks of Californians.
Schools, cities, and counties up and down the Golden State have shed positions, implemented real hiring freezes and - here’s a shock - found ways to combine and streamline services to do more with less.
If you doubt that just look at Manteca Unified. They cut teachers and support staff to make ends meet plus rethought how they ran the schools. That’s pretty typical of how local schools are dealing with the ongoing economic crisis. Do you think the educarts who fill the towering buildings on Capitol Mall in Sacramento suffered the same fate to their ranks?
Granted, the bloated bureaucracy is as much the result of the political clout that state employee unions buy with their massive campaign donations as it is with Californians’ delusional demands that services be maintained or increased while taxes are cut.
The size of the bureaucracy is about appeasing special interest groups instead of having one streamlined agency that deals with all water concerns, one with all transportation issues, or one with all environmental concerns.
Of course Brown already knows how fruitless it is to try and encourage innovative thinking in a bid to get folks to rethink the structure of government. Such efforts 28 years ago earned him the moniker of Governor Moonbeam.
It isn’t about working together for California as it is about turf protection.
Brown is correct in saying the pain has to be shared.
And what better way to do that than to keep temporary taxes in place for five more years?
This proposal immediately brought howls about how it is setting California up for the biggest tax increase in the history of any state.
Most of those howls are coming from Republicans.
That is simply not true. The temporary tax increases would be kept in place and not increased.
But then again this is no different that the dishonest way that many members on the Democratic side of the aisle in Congress decried the “Bush tax breaks” that should aptly be called the “Tax-Breaks-Approved by-a-Democrat-controlled-Congress-under-President Bush” as being a reduction in taxes. Taxes were already reduced temporarily. It simply extended that status for various segments of the tax code just like Brown is suggesting ending the “temporary status quo” for taxes in California.
It’s also a bit worrisome that Brown talks about returning social services mandated by the state back to the county and then require them to follow state directives in terms of funding levels without giving up the revenue that was collected to support such endeavors.
That, however, is nothing compared to slams thrown against Brown by people who said they supported him in the election.
One was a CalWorks benefactor who said she voted for Brown solely on the belief a Democrat would never reduce CalWorks funding. The other were protesting state workers who had already mass produced posters with photos of the movie poster promo for “Twins” subsidizing the head of Danny DeVito with Jerry Brown’s who is shown standing next to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Brown somehow believes the proposed budget package is going to be acted upon by March. Good luck with that one.
As for waiting for the voters to reject tax increases in June all it does is kick the can further down the road and make it even more difficult to escape the bonds of perennial deficits.
California has its sacred state worker.
The most glaring aspect of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget is that it fails to cut to what ails California - bloated expectations that have created a bloated bureaucracy.
Save for a handful of state employees not represented by collective bargaining that could get 10 percent pay cuts, not a single state employee is in jeopardy. It is because the third rail of Sacramento politics - the state employee groups - are not targeted to have their ranks pruned. There are 237,576 active state employees being paid $1.4 billion in wages alone each year according to the California State Controller’s Office.
In the past two years the ranks of state employees hasn’t shrunk. Also a number of “retirees” are hired as temp workers to fill positions they vacated.
It is not as much about the salaries that could be saved but also about the redundant regulations and massive paper chase that could be reduced or eliminated.
This all points to one painfully obvious truth - state government will not reinvent itself and as a result it is the ultimate albatross around the collective necks of Californians.
Schools, cities, and counties up and down the Golden State have shed positions, implemented real hiring freezes and - here’s a shock - found ways to combine and streamline services to do more with less.
If you doubt that just look at Manteca Unified. They cut teachers and support staff to make ends meet plus rethought how they ran the schools. That’s pretty typical of how local schools are dealing with the ongoing economic crisis. Do you think the educarts who fill the towering buildings on Capitol Mall in Sacramento suffered the same fate to their ranks?
Granted, the bloated bureaucracy is as much the result of the political clout that state employee unions buy with their massive campaign donations as it is with Californians’ delusional demands that services be maintained or increased while taxes are cut.
The size of the bureaucracy is about appeasing special interest groups instead of having one streamlined agency that deals with all water concerns, one with all transportation issues, or one with all environmental concerns.
Of course Brown already knows how fruitless it is to try and encourage innovative thinking in a bid to get folks to rethink the structure of government. Such efforts 28 years ago earned him the moniker of Governor Moonbeam.
It isn’t about working together for California as it is about turf protection.
Brown is correct in saying the pain has to be shared.
And what better way to do that than to keep temporary taxes in place for five more years?
This proposal immediately brought howls about how it is setting California up for the biggest tax increase in the history of any state.
Most of those howls are coming from Republicans.
That is simply not true. The temporary tax increases would be kept in place and not increased.
But then again this is no different that the dishonest way that many members on the Democratic side of the aisle in Congress decried the “Bush tax breaks” that should aptly be called the “Tax-Breaks-Approved by-a-Democrat-controlled-Congress-under-President Bush” as being a reduction in taxes. Taxes were already reduced temporarily. It simply extended that status for various segments of the tax code just like Brown is suggesting ending the “temporary status quo” for taxes in California.
It’s also a bit worrisome that Brown talks about returning social services mandated by the state back to the county and then require them to follow state directives in terms of funding levels without giving up the revenue that was collected to support such endeavors.
That, however, is nothing compared to slams thrown against Brown by people who said they supported him in the election.
One was a CalWorks benefactor who said she voted for Brown solely on the belief a Democrat would never reduce CalWorks funding. The other were protesting state workers who had already mass produced posters with photos of the movie poster promo for “Twins” subsidizing the head of Danny DeVito with Jerry Brown’s who is shown standing next to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Brown somehow believes the proposed budget package is going to be acted upon by March. Good luck with that one.
As for waiting for the voters to reject tax increases in June all it does is kick the can further down the road and make it even more difficult to escape the bonds of perennial deficits.
