Publication Date: Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Editorial: Communities await
Editorial: Communities await
(January 14, 2004)bad budget news
Local leaders await details of the state's disastrous budget, expecting severe impacts on social, health, transportation, environmental programs -- but will fiscal pain be equitable?
California just doesn't have the money to avoid making massive budget cuts, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared last week.
He's right, of course.
But as communities throughout the state figuratively hold their breaths to find out just how bad local impacts will be, a disturbing question arises about whether the hardships are being spread equitably among state programs and services.
In other words, are the well-to-do being spared the pain of one of the greatest budget crises in the state's recent history? Answers will depend greatly on party registration -- Republicans rallying to their new governor's defense and Democrats decrying the harsh cuts without the wealthy being asked to share the fiscal pain in any way.
Ultimately, the equity issue may outweigh the impacts -- despite their severity -- as a test of how California will be able to function in the next few years. It will determine just how partisan, how bitter, how divided leaders will be, from Sacramento to local communities.
The more divided our leaders are, the less we citizens can expect the best possible outcomes from any issue. The more the burden of budget-balancing falls on the backs of the middle class and the working class -- not to mention the poor, the elderly and the young -- the more polarized, divided and angry the state will become.
Despite the showmanship and glamour of Schwarzenegger's presentation, news reports and analyses indicate that key elements of the package are recycled from proposals tried by former Governor Gray Davis. This in itself may be fine, but it's not the "new ideas" that Schwarzenegger promised us during his campaign. Did anyone really expect anything new?
Yet the same court challenges and barriers that frustrated Davis' proposals may be lying in wait for some of the key components of Schwarzenegger's package -- most significantly a proposed 10 percent cut in the state's Medi-Cal health-care coverage for the poor. A proposed 5 percent cut last year was blocked in court. Similarly, a Davis plan to sell nearly $1 billion in bonds to cover state pensions was blocked in court -- but it's back.
A central pillar of Schwarzenegger's no-new-taxes budget plan is a proposal to put a $15 billion bond measure before state voters in March. This is an essential ingredient in a recovery plan -- even though it literally passes the buck to future generations.
Will the smell of inequity and unfairness implicit in the present package doom that measure? Or will we just have to hold our noses and support it?
Other than the health impacts on children, families and the elderly and potential cuts to public-safety services, the saddest element of the new package to us is the imposition major fee hikes for higher education. Schwarzenegger bought key support when he reached agreement with the California Teachers' Association that enables him to defer to future years half of a $4 billion commitment to increase school funding for K-12 schools.
But students approaching state universities or graduate schools will face a 10 percent increase in tuition for undergraduates and a 40 percent increase for graduate students. Many undergraduates will be encouraged to spend their first two years in community colleges -- at an undetermined cost and impact on those colleges.
Overall, the increased costs could mean that thousands of students will not be going on to higher education -- an incalculable loss in a state already struggling against further educational slippage. The loss of an educated workforce will mean diminished personal earnings, a less attractive environment for new-business investment and less reason for existing businesses to remain in California.
Although not a surprise, this budget fails the fairness test. Equity has been sacrificed on the altar of Republican ideology of no-new-taxes and spare-the-rich. While we don't go as far as State Treasurer Phil Angelides (a Democrat with an eye on the governor's office), who called the package "morally and economically bankrupt," the package does have serious practical, political and ethical deficiencies that should be addressed in a bipartisan, non-ideological manner -- before the March 2 election.
Those shortcomings will undermine and could kill the crucial bond measure in March, resulting in the entire package falling apart.
E-mail a friend a link to this story. | 
