One sad aspect of this year’s California school budget “trigger” fiasco was that, for fiscal realists, the “unexpected” budget shortfall was evident the day the CA state budget was passed. This “budget” made unusually bold (a.k.a. moronic) Pollyannaish assumptions about revenue. All economic indicators predicted lower figures, but the legislature was intent on passing a budget — ANY budget — prior to 30 June.
Remember that the voters unwisely approved the passage of SIMPLE MAJORITY budgets. Moreover, under that same proposition, the legislators would stop being paid after 30 June if no budget were passed. This deeply flawed state budget was the first one approved under the new criteria.
The law of unintended consequences played its predictable role in the budget ballet. The Democrats could ignore those pesky naysaying Republican representatives — the Dems passed the budget regardless of economic reality. How’d THAT work out?
To compound the problem, the school districts essentially were told to spend the projected money — to assume that no “trigger” shortfall was likely. And spend they did. As difficult as it would have been to make the cuts and adjustments in July, it will be FAR harder to reduce spending in December or January.
We all can certainly feel sorrow for the school district employees whose lives will be disrupted by this “unexpected” shortfall, but the REAL victims of this pathetic process are our kids. And that makes this mess all the more tragic.
Comments 1
Are we ever going to see fiscal leadership in Sacramento? Every year it’s the same thing and this year, Governor Brown had the nerve to sign a budget that anyone in their right mind, knew wasn’t balanced. “Overly optimistic revenue projections”, yea right and they really expected to see those?? Leadership would be to base a budget on pessimistic revenue projections that then put any surplus away for a rainy day, because you know what, one day we will have a major emergency and we will have nothing coming from the state because our so-called leaders had no leadership in solving this budget problem.
Oh, and BTW, why haven’t the Republicans been more vocal about their own budget plan? I rather be presented a realistic budget plan and be told “This is how we would solve it” and then force the Democrats to come up with an actual way to solve the budget problem. Leadership means having the guts to stand up for your beliefs even if it means getting defeated.
Why do we even pay those elected officials? They can’t come up with a REAL way to solve the budget problem-it’s the same thing over and over-passing the problem to the next year while agencies and organizations that depend on the state, suffer because they can’t plan for the future.