Quote:
Originally posted by techweenie
My apologies. If he was talking about the state legislators of California, he may well have a valid point. But I would think a constituent of one of those legislators might feel differently.
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I am a constituent, in fact.
The CA state government has done a very bad job over the past 10 years. We've had some bad governors (Pete Wilson, Gray Davis). The legislators have gerry-mandered themselves into comfortable security - many of them run for re-election unopposed. During the 1999-2000 Bubble the state government abandoned financial discipline, cut taxes and raised spending. When the bubble burst the budget fell into a deep and structural deficit.
This is basically the same story as the federal government under Bush, except that CA by law must balance its budget every year.
Instead of making the tough decisions to balance the budget, the state government played games - drew down reserve accounts, manipulated accounting assumptions, etc - to achieve "fake" balanced budgets.
When Ahnold replaced Gray Davis, he told voters that he would balance the budget through innovative thinking and cutting waste, i.e. without raising taxes or cutting services.
This was total lying bullc**p, that the voters were stupid or star-struck enough to believe. Ahnold's budgets have resorted to the same tricks as previous budgets, and his big innovation was an enormous bond issue to temporarily paper over the deficit. (I voted against the bond issue, on the theory that having the state's budget to be thrown into absolute crisis was the only way Ahnold and the legislators would be forced to make tough decisions.)
Anyway, we now continue to have a severe budget problem, state services continue to get slowly strangled - everything from education to fish&game to low-income assistance to basic infrastructure - and politicians keep looking for ways to raise tax revenue without looking like they're raising tax revenue. In CA, this last means the state confiscates tax revenues from the counties and cities, in effect pushing budget deficits down to the local level. For example, earlier this year a local district was going to eliminate
all high school sports,
all elementary school music, and
all libraries and all counselors.
(A group of teachers and grade school kids spent their spring break walking from the Bay Area to Sacramento, appx 80 miles; when they arrived at the State Capitol after 8 days of walking, Ahnold refused to meet with them.)
So, yes, I think the CA state legislature
and the CA state governor - Arnold himself - are collectively "losers". Maybe they'll actually tackle the state's problems and in a year I'll post my apology to them here. I would welcome the chance to do that.