Posted on 04/24/2012 3:10:59 PM PDT by SmithL
A Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that the state controller has no authority to judge whether the state budget is balanced or block lawmakers' pay as he did last June.
In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown.
In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller does not have discretion to determine whether the Legislature's budget is balanced. Proposition 25 said that lawmakers must approve a balanced budget by June 15 or else lose their pay.
Brown's ruling essentially says that the Legislature can determine for itself whether a budget is balanced.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.sacbee.com ...
Brown's ruling essentially says that the Legislature can determine for itself whether a budget is balanced.Smoke and Mirrors is the law of the land.
Should be a pretty simple exercise...if projected tax revenues = planned expenditures then it’s balanced.
Well...an idiot could invent a budget that looks balanced....feels balanced...acts balanced....but is simply not balanced. So I don’t think any of this really matters in the end. It’s like talking about social security, and you know that it has a definite end point where it will be dissolved, yet you do nothing to fix the problem now. Obviously, you have to be brilliant in budget and finance...to say the problem isn’t important to fix right now (maybe even worth a nomination for the Nobel Prize for economics).
So, once again, a judge is ruling that the voters don’t have any real authority other than to keep paying for whatever the legislature dreams up.
“Should be a pretty simple exercise...if projected tax revenues = planned expenditures then it’s balanced.”
Should be simple, yes. But look at all the work you’ve made for lawyers in one little sentence:
What constitutes a projection?
What constitutes a plan?
What constitutes an expenditure?
What is and is not revenue?
What is and is not a tax?
Wiggle room galore.
“Should be a pretty simple exercise...if projected tax revenues = planned expenditures then it’s balanced.”
Should be simple, yes. But look at all the work you’ve made for lawyers in one little sentence:
What constitutes a projection?
What constitutes a plan?
What constitutes an expenditure?
What is and is not revenue?
What is and is not a tax?
Wiggle room galore.
“Should be a pretty simple exercise...if projected tax revenues = planned expenditures then it’s balanced.”
Should be simple, yes. But look at all the work you’ve made for lawyers in one little sentence:
What constitutes a projection?
What constitutes a plan?
What constitutes an expenditure?
What is and is not revenue?
What is and is not a tax?
Wiggle room galore.
new name to me. Is Judge Brown a delta salmon fan too? he has it bass ackwards, anyone could have smelt it coming.
and so, the state sets slowly into the ocean, the beads of oil sticking to the foreheads of legislators, their heads stuck stiffly in the sands of time and irony..
makes ya wonder, why even vote if but to say No to more parcel taxes than there are sands on Long Beach. Progre$$ives, where would we be without them? .. besides out from under the massive debt they bring with their ‘governance’.
The controller took the wrong tack.
He should take the budgeted expenditures, devide by 12 and establish a monthly expenditure ceiling.
Then at the 25th or 20th of the month when it is all spent, write no more checks till the first of the next month.
Picking on the politicians was not a good choice.
There hasn't been a balanced California budget for years...but since the legislature are the ones who get to determine if a budget is balanced they still get paid.
I'm dizzy.
We do declare the budget is balanced. Now give me my check!
The house of cards will crash when the interest payments on debt exceed the ability of the State to make those interest payments. It may actually crash sooner than that. When interest on the debt consumes enough that services that are considered politically untouchable must be cut.
In the mean time, every bit of spending on anything else is going towards debt payments and those presently untouchable spending priorities. Among those priorities is public education with budget amounts that represent about 55 percent of all State spending.
In other words, balanced budget amendments are a joke if they do NOT require a balanced budget every year and defines it as total revenues exceeding total expenditures.
Anyone can say anything and no amount of brilliants can ever change the fact that if x>y then y-x= a negative value. IE budget deficit.
Anyone claiming to the contrary is either an idiot or trying to make a fool out of you.
This stick of withholding pay was Prop 25's carrot to voters to reduce the majority needed to pass a budget to a simple majority meaning the Republican minority had no power and Democrats could pass budgets with impunity.
Now with a judge tossing out the teeth of the enforceability piece, the Democrats can do anything they like and deem it balanced at NO RISK to their wallets.
Imagine the Comptroller was colluding to make this happen for The Party.
There's been no Republican Comptroller in over 35 years.
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