It's Now A $26 Billion Dollar Problem

According to Mike Genest, the Governor's Director of Finance, the $24.3 billion dollar problem expanded by $2 billion dollars last night. He's not taking into account the interest on IOUs, of course, or the expanded borrowing costs. But he's factoring in the education spending that now cannot be cut below a certain level because of "maintenance of effort laws." Genest said that higher education has agreed to keep their books open an extra month, until July 31, meaning that the $1 billion in higher education cuts to the 2008-09 budget year could still be enacted. This is basically fuzzy math, since the additional expenditures due to the Governor's stubbornness do not get addressed.

What the Governor wants to do now, to recoup those cuts under Prop. 98, is to suspend the law. Once again, the reckless lawlessness of the Governor and his allies, out of an unwillingness to deal with budget reality, exposes itself. In addition, the Governor has backed off on the outsized budget reserve as well as eliminating vital programs like welfare, state park closures, children's health care and student grants. Of course, this has been replaced by unrelated items like cutting public employee pensions and social services fraud inspections, both of which would do nothing to the deficit in the near term.

The Governor has declared a state of emergency, under Prop. 58 rules. This means that the legislature has 45 days to come up with a solution on the budget, and if they fail to do so, they cannot adjourn or act on other bills. This is a moot point, since the Governor has vowed already to veto any non budget-related bill until a solution is reached. This just brings the legislature into special session (the fourth since December, I believe).

In addition, the Governor announced three furlough days a month for state employees to save cash, which amounts to a 15% pay cut. And IOUs will get issued tomorrow. They will have an interest rate for the banks which accept them of between 2-5%.

Here was my favorite part of his press conference:

Guv gets booed by some who watch him leave press conf and walk back to his office.

By the way, there's a new hashtag to find all budget news on Twitter: #cabudget.