Posted on 05/05/2009 5:54:00 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
The 'Plan B' scenarios if the special election measures are defeated continue to trickle out of the administration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. This afternoon, a new one: the governor is prepared to propose a $2 billion suspension of the 2004 constitutional initiative protecting city and county revenues.
Talk of suspending 2004's Proposition 1A comes on the heels of a meeting yesterday where Schwarzenegger aides told the firefighting community that voters rejecting the measures on the ballot in two weeks time would result in as many as 1,700 firefighting positions.
One local government official on this afternoon's call said the plan would be to borrow as much from local governments as Prop 1A allows -- 8% of property tax revenues in the 2008-09 fiscal year, estimated at $2 billion. An aide to the governor confirms the proposal was discussed.
That borrowing would not be easy... or cheap.
The five-year-old constitutional amendment, championed by Schwarzenegger, requires that the money be repaid with interest within three years. It also would require a supermajority vote of the Legislature.
Word of such a plan comes almost five years to the day that Schwarzenegger struck a deal with cities and counties for help back then, in exchange for Prop 1A.
"We have to get our act together as a state," said the governor on May 12, 2004, "rather than always looking to the counties and to the cities and take money away from them."
The suspension of 2004's Prop 1A has apparently been in the works for a while. Earlier this afternoon, I asked the budget campaign team for documentation supporting their new TV ad's assertion that "24,000 firefighters and police" could get laid off if the measures fail.
The document that I received referenced the Prop 1A suspension, and was sent to me before word of the proposal was confirmed by both those on today's call and the Schwarzenegger administration.
All of this is leading to a fairly intense debate as to whether the governor and his team are fairly, or unfairly, predicting dire consequences should the ballot measures fail.
(A clarification: only Propositions 1C, 1D, and 1E include money being counted on for 2009-2010. The extra tax increases attached to Proposition 1A are still another two years away.)
Whether these private meetings with interest groups like firefighters and local officials are prudent planning... or part of a last minute effort to push unhappy voters into acceptance of the ballot propositions... is the subject of some debate.
Representatives of two separate opposition campaigns have called these news reports, coupled with the dire predictions in the TV ad mentioned above, "scare tactics."
The governor took exception to that in an event with firefighters this morning.
"I think that we owe it to the people of California," he told reporters, "to tell them what the consequences are, so they know. And then they still have a choice to vote yes or no on those [measures]."
And the governor said it wasn't just public safety that would be hit hard, as you can hear for yourself below:
Aides to Schwarzenegger say critics of the measures need to be specific about where they would find the money to solve the state's budget woes.
All of this only confirms the tension that you can slowly feel start to build around the state Capitol... not just about the May 19 election, but about what happens on May 20.
Welcome to America’s fiscal future.
DEAR ARNULD.... suck it up baby ....
NO on ALL props
> voters rejecting the measures on the ballot in two weeks time would result in as many as 1,700 firefighting positions.
Does anybody know how to write?
No, they removed the writing course from journalism school in favor of a ‘gay studies’ course.
A threat from the gubmint. There’s sure a lot of that goin’ around lately.
The ONLY one to vote yes for is 1F which means no pay raises for the politicians in years with a budget deficit. Otherwise, it is no on the first five (1A thru 1E).
Vote NO on all of the Propositions.
Arnold, wake us when things are so serious that they may have to drill for oil off the coast, or sell assets like buildings, back bonds with real estate. Until then you are not serious.
I received a mailer from AFSMCE about the CA props on Monday. Amazing enough they have asked to vote no on all and they gave their reasons. So then I received a call from the CTA about the props on Tuesday about the props so I had a little debate with the woman caller about my already high taxes here and she wanted to know why I wouldn’t fund the schools. I mentioned to her about the 40% the schools already get from the budget and the lottery money, this was followed by silence and then a “well thank you for your time. I obviously called someone who was aware of the issues”. I had to laugh at her last comment.
Possible Plan Bs:
1) Get court to throw out ballot initiatives.
2) Constitutional Convention so we can raise taxes whenever we want.
3) Ban tax protesters from demonstrating, writing or talking
Writing requires thinking.
As to CA, they won’t miss the firefighters. They should be privatized as they mostly run ambulances.
Cut your staff in half. Layoff 5% of all employees -- for starters. Roll back salaries of all state employees to 2005 levels. Modify the pension plans, prospectively, to provide a maximum 50% of salary on retirement and no benefits before age 65. Terminate all activities associated with "cap and trade" and regulation of greenhouse gases. Etc. etc. etc. I think he's been given a list at least 1000 times.
Sorry, Arnie... not buyin' in to the "Armageddon" thing. You tried that before, remember?
Another view (which mirrors mine)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2244813/posts
Prop 1F: No
Raise Without a Balanced Budget. NO.
What’s not to like about a measure that says to the Legislature, “If you don’t pass a balanced budget you won’t get a raise?”
My advice: beware any measure that puts a representative’s self-interest ahead of the public interest. I’m afraid this would ultimately end up as a perverse incentive for legislators to pass higher and higher taxes in order to qualify for higher and higher salaries. We actually had a balanced budget device in the constitution that worked well: the Gann Spending Limit. We need to bring it back.
4. Pass Redistricting legislation favoring liberals — Check.
5. Redraw districts to eliminate conservative legislators — In progress pending 2010 Census
6. Eliminate 2/3 majority rule for budget/tax — Public opinion campaign in progress
...
No. Using across-the-board cuts you’ll never get there — firing 5% of the workforce only saves $1.5 billion per year. You MUST eliminate, in their entirety, some programs. Examples:
1) Zero funding to illegals for health care, welfare, food, etc. That saves about $15-20B per year.
2) Cut useless feel-good environmental programs — the state employees, the $$ to contractors, sell the state buildings. Saves billions per year.
3) Allow drilling for oil offshore in California. The revenue from the sales will be many tens of billions per year. Sell bonds immediately based on future income to cover the current deficit.
4) Overrule environmental laws and allow construction of oil refineries, water desalination, highways, and other plants. Property tax revenue and economic boost improves budget by billions.
THAT’s how you balance the budget in California.
No benefits to illegals except emergency care to get tham across the border safely. Save 10-14 bill a year.
LOL, oldest trick in the book - - tell the mindless chattering class that if they refuse to fork over yet more taxes their houses will burn down because there are no firefighters, criminals will steal everything they own because there are no cops, and of course the parks and libraries will be shut down.
NO WAY will the politicians and their bureaucrat mob of hacks and brothers-in-law take any kind of hit by rolling back the money, pensions, and perks they give themselves. ...No way will they reduce the wasteful spending they count on to buy the votes of their “base” constituency of parasites.
Once again we will see just how stupid the voters are. I am not optimistic.
I agree... and I am an opponent of them for solving budget problems. But I also think that the whole place is bloated and that across the board would just take a little cushion out of all the arrogant SOBs that that have no clue as to how the rest of the state lives. So... 5% right off that bat.
Then... start eliminating programs... lots of them!
You have a good list of suggestions there. But like I said, I think they've heard them before. They just don't have the will to do it.
My solution: Throw all the bums out! (that would be the elected officials and legislators... and a few judges to boot)
Schwarzenegger was asked about former Govs. Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson raising taxes “when it came down to the crunch” to balance their budgets. Wouldn’t he do the same?What followed wasn’t as much political spinning as outright truth-twisting:
“If we have an emergency and something unexpected happens, absolutely, I will raise the taxes. But I am not faced with those kind of emergencies at this point because, as you know, Pete Wilson, who was a great governor … had a terrible time in the beginning.“I mean, here this poor guy went in there with great enthusiasm trying to fix the state, and here the $14-billion debt — right? — that he inherited. And all of a sudden he’s hit with riots, with fires, with floods, with mudslides, with earthquakes, with one disaster after the other.
“So this is why he had to raise the taxes because here all of a sudden the bridges and freeways were collapsing, buildings were collapsing. So he had to come up quickly with the money to make up for those kind of damages.
“So, otherwise, he would have never raised the taxes.”
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