Budget stalemate continues unabated  

Analysis from CSBA’s Governmental Relations Department

The state budget impasse continues as this issue of California School News goes to press.

A budget vote on the Assembly floor in mid-August fell nine votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority, after which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released his “August Revise” (echoing the official May Revise that occurs each spring). That proposal would reduce general fund spending by $2 billion from what the Senate-Assembly Conference Committee approved in July, with as much as $1 billion taken from education. The governor continues to rely on a 1-cent state sales tax increase for three years, followed by a permanent quarter-cent reduction, and he seeks even greater unilateral midyear cutting authority than he’d proposed previously.

The issues at hand for CSBA and the education community are to:

• maintain the level of funding provided in the Conference Committee report
• reject any spending cap proposal which would harm California’s long-term interests by arbitrarily restricting spending on public education at a time when additional investments are needed
• reject any authority for the governor to make unilateral mid-year cuts
• ensure that the budget provides a solution addressing the state’s long-term fiscal problems, not short-term gimmicks

Related link:

• For the latest news on the state budget’s implications for education, click on the “Schools: An Investment We Can’t Afford to Cut” icon @ www.csba.org.