CA - Analysis: Dueling deficits create a muddle

Sac Bee ^ | 1/16/03 | Margaret Talev

[NormsRevenge]

The report suggesting California's budget shortfall is significantly less than his $34.6 billion estimate sent Gov. Gray Davis scrambling Wednesday to salvage his credibility with lawmakers and his prospects for tax increases this year.

Minutes after Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill announced her smaller $26.1 billion shortfall estimate, the Democratic governor's newly appointed finance director, Steve Peace, called a news conference defending the governor's estimate as a "legitimate accounting approach."

[NormsRevenge]

The Byline .. LOL

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[NormsRevenge]

Ping

[Dog Gone]

This is good news for California taxpayers.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for the ping and the post!

Davis is a damn scumbag!

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The Governor says:

I>"Californians sent us to Sacramento to solve the problems, not to call one another names."

Send in the Manure Movers of America, it is still piling up in Sacramento!

[concentric circles]

I am surprised that the media are giving this story such strong play instead of just continuing to use Davis' figures. The following quotes came from other stories this week.

The L.A. Times ran this: "Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) made a case in response to the budget proposal Davis rolled out Friday that included $8.3 billion in tax hikes.

"If you simply arrested the growth in state spending and reduced our overall state expenditures by only 9.5%, the deficit would go away by the end of the fiscal year," he said."

The Orange County Register reported on a budget study by Chapman University: "Chapman's figures show the state's deficit will be only $5.9 billion, as opposed to nearly $31.4 billion the Davis administration has predicted for the 2002-03 fiscal year, said Esmael Adibi, director of Chapman's Anderson Center for Economic Research.

Adibi's research also predicts a $4.9 billion deficit for the 2003-04 fiscal year, while the state predicts a $26.8 billion hole."

Let's hope the opposition hangs tough.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for the ping!

It is so hard to know which liars to even semi believe:

Davis and the rats controlling the Kali legislature.

Or the lying mediots who control the media in Kaliforniliar land.

[concentric circles]

Additional from the Chapman University story.

"There are many reasons that Chapman's numbers are different from other analyses. First, the Chapman analysis takes into account both money in the general fund – where property and income taxes pay for state services such as colleges, kindergarten through 12th-grade education and medical care for the poor – and "special funds,'' which come from other sources, such as cigarette and fuel taxes and motor vehicle fees. When the finance department calculates the deficit, it only counts the general fund, not special funds. Chapman also criticized the way the Davis administration counted money that it expected, but did not have, as a deficit – helping to inflate figures."

"Chapman, based in Orange, also questioned the way the state calculates the deficit. When the state makes projections and doesn't meet them, it counts as a deficit. The Chapman figures only count a deficit when numbers fall below what the state actually received the previous year."