Free Republic

Sacramento -- California faces deep mid-year cuts to its universities, community colleges, social service programs and public schools - which may have their year shortened - because the state will collect billions in revenue less than expected, according to a report released today. The report by the Legislative Analyst's Office says the state faces a budget deficit in the current fiscal year largely because it will collect only $300 million of $4 billion that Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature added to the budget just days before it was approved in June. Critics had called the sudden infusion of projected...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger began the year vowing to cut, cut, cut. But the final spending plan heading for a vote this week in the Legislature relies on billions of dollars in borrowing and one-time savings to balance and avoids most of the deep reductions Schwarzenegger proposed in January. Battered by a monthlong budget battle, Schwarzenegger gave ground to the Legislature's Democratic majority in fashioning the last details of the estimated $103 billion spending plan. Schwarzenegger agreed to lift an enrollment cap at state universities, to drop a proposal to slash wages of home health care workers and to provide a...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed spending cap faced sharp criticism Tuesday from education advocates who claimed it eventually would gut funding to public schools by $2 billion a year and strip their constitutional guarantees of funding. Administration officials acknowledged the Proposition 98 protections would be weakened, but Education Secretary Richard Riordan insisted Schwarzenegger intends to fully fund education, even as he deals with the massive budget shortfall he inherited. The criticism of the governor's fiscal recovery plan followed a report from the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office, which estimated that the Schwarzenegger spending cap could eventually cut $2 billion...