Sacramento lawmakers save state of California from bankruptcy ... but ...
... they covered the state's cash flow shortfall by 'stealing' money owed to California cities and counties !!!
(snip)"The package cuts spending by $15 billion, including $6 billion from schools and community colleges, $3 billion from universities and $1.2 billion from prisons. It also raises $4 billion, in part by accelerating personal and corporate income- tax withholding and increasing the amount withheld by 10 percent.
The passage will allow the state to use $2 billion of local property taxes meant for cities and other local jurisdictions and some $1.7 billion earmarked for redevelopment agencies."(snip)
(snip)"California local governments criticized the budget deal struck last night and expressed doubts about plans to tap $2 billion of their property taxes to close the $26 billion state deficit.
McKenzie and Paul McIntosh, the executive director of the California State Association of Counties, said localities may file a lawsuit challenging the use of their gasoline tax and redevelopment funds, which they said violates the state constitution.
“They don’t want to cut spending and they don’t want to raise taxes,” said McKenzie. “They find it’s easier to steal the money.”(snip)
(snip)"“We had a deficit,” said Assembly speaker Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat. “We fixed the problem. The IOUs should stop soon.” California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said the new budget plan addresses the state’s structural deficit.
Speaker Karen Bass and Treasurer Bill Lockyer are sadly mistaken, assuming they even believe the nonsense they are spouting. This bill solves nothing. Not a single structural problem was addressed.
Ongoing Structural Defects
•An ever increasing demand for free services by an influx of illegal aliens
•Too many free social programs in general
•Massive underfunding of pension plans especially CALPers
•An untenable pension system in general based on defined benefits on too few years of service
•Structurally unfair property tax system
•Union contracts the state cannot afford
•A bloated prison system"(snip)
Re: Sacramento lawmakers save state of California from bankruptcy ... but ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Melonie
... they covered the state's cash flow shortfall by 'stealing' money owed to California cities and counties !!!...
Quote from the blog Common Sense World: "The $15 billion in permanent spending cuts included several billion dollars worth of “automatic” spending increases that now won’t happen. But that’s not really a cut, since these “increases” don’t represent real dollars already spent. Not real program cuts at all, just keeping the automatic increases from happening this year." The link to the full article:
http://commonsenseworld.com/2009/02/...-tax-increase/
And one other quote from the author's blog:
"California legislators have a long history of overspending, buckling to state employee unions in boon [sic] times, and creating unnecessary government programs and policies to employ former legislators. A state garbage board meets regularly, pulls in 6-figure incomes for board members (who are political favor takers) and does little to make life better for Californians. This is but one example."
Re: Sacramento lawmakers save state of California from bankruptcy ... but ...
^^^ obviously your points are true. However, they do NOT address the 'newly invented evil' inherent in the Cal legislature's actions ... which essentially revolves around the state 'intercepting' certain forms of tax revenues ( i.e. gasoline tax revenues that were 'promised' to counties and cities, 'tax increment dollars' derived from state income tax revenue of which a certain percentage was to be shared with counties and cities, etc.) for spending at the state level. This in turn leaves counties and cities to their own devices to 'make up for the revenue shortfall' by some other means. or to truly cut local gov't spending levels. In point of fact, there are really only two means available to restore local tax revenues in the absence of 'kickbacks' from the state ... increasing local property tax rates and increasing local sales tax rates.
In the grand scheme of things, the Cal state legislators' actions will wind up affecting areas where the population is poor or middle class far more deeply than areas where the population is 'rich'. This is due to a combination of factors, but major ones are that poor areas create much higher levels of social welfare / MediCal spending ( of which a large portion must be derived from local gov't budgets), poor areas are far less able to absorb a 1% sales tax increase or a 50% property tax increase etc. As a result, poor areas will likely be forced to cut back on local gov't spending items that they CAN control, such as employment of teachers / police / firemen, such as low income housing projects, such as local community college funding etc.
On the flip side, rich areas like the poster child Beverly Hills are unlikely to have an issue of increased social welfare benefit / MediCal spending to deal with, since no local residents could have an income low enough to qualify. The major issue in rich California communities is likely to be increased burglaries / robberies / muggings, as citizens living in poor areas become more desparate. However, Beverly Hills and other rich areas are certainly able to absorb the cost of higher property taxes in order to provide their police dep'ts with top notch personnel as well as unlimited 'tools' for law enforcement. They also have the political independence and financial means to create a 'fortress community' if 'restless neighbors' warranted such action ... communities where non-community members will become automatic targets of suspicion ...
(snip)"WE SHOULD ALL thank the Tiburon Town Council and Police Chief Mike Cronin for being bold and encourage them to move forward with the plan to install cameras to record the license plates of cars coming in and out of the Tiburon Peninsula. Other towns in California should take note for the information learned from this experiment will benefit all of them.(snip)
(snip)"The idea of cameras monitoring cars going in and out of the Tiburon Peninsula is not new and was first introduced around 1995 in order to prevent, or aid in the quick location of potential child kidnappings. (snip)
(snip)While I personally do not like the image of a gated or fortressed Tiburon, I recognized that this was a real concern in my community and set out to figure out a solution. It doesn't take long to understand that we have only two points in and out of the peninsula and a camera system would be very effective. Unfortunately, at the time there wasn't a political majority or a police chief that shared my views.
While my genesis for this idea was child abduction, I fully agree with Chief Cronin that solving crimes and property recovery will be the huge beneficiary. Today, if your home is robbed the police will tell you there is very little chance if any of getting your property back. This will change dramatically.
A burglary took place on my street just a year ago and two of my neighbors sensed there was a strange car in front of the house and independently gave the precise time frame, make and color of the car. Unfortunately, nobody thought to get the license plate number. It probably would have taken less than a half hour's time to identify car on the camera record and then have the license plate, enabling police to quickly track the people down before they sold the stolen property.
We don't have to live with or accept a certain level of crime, property loss and high insurance premiums. We have an effective tool to change that and we should use it."(snip)
from
IMHO this absolutely smacks of a developing 'third world' style divide between the rich and the poor in California. The chosen course of action by Cal state legislators only promotes a widening of that divide.
Re: Sacramento lawmakers save state of California from bankruptcy ... but ...
FYI - Garbage board has been dissolved. Certainly not the solution to California's problems. I see more fortress building in the future. Roads will be blocked off with limited entrance - I've seen it in other cities in the past as people in a suburb gang together and demand it.