Gentle Readers: It’s always the Unintended Consequences.
Gov. Schwarzenegger ending of the Car Tax has cost the state about $6billion a year; the state’s revenue shortfall amounts to almost exactly $6billion per year of the Schwarzenegger administration.
In our haste to do away with the 2/3rds rule to pass a budget and raise taxes let’s not forget that it also takes 2/3rds to suspend Prop 98!
By Kimberly S. Wetzel | West County Times | from the San Jose Mercury News
Updated: 07/08/2009 06:40:59 AM PDT -- Saying that local schools already have suffered enough from budget cuts, state education representatives on Tuesday joined a growing chorus of leaders decrying the governor's proposal to suspend a 1988 ballot measure guaranteeing minimum funding for education.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week suggested suspending Proposition 98 as a way to help solve the state's $26 billion budget crisis. Prop. 98 requires a minimum level of education funding based in part on what was spent the previous year.
Suspending it would required a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature, and several Democrats and the California Teachers Association have said they oppose such action. The association turned last weekend's National Education Association conference in San Diego into a rally against the proposal.
State Superintendent Jack O'Connell on Tuesday called the idea a "shortsighted and irresponsible" spending plan that will stifle education for years.
"By suspending this proposition, it will cause both severe and long-lasting harm to our students and our schools," O'Connell said during a news conference in Sacramento. "Education has always been made the scapegoat for the California budget crisis."
Schools up and down California implemented deep budget cuts after $12 billion was siphoned from education spending this year. Districts have responded by putting more students in classrooms, offering fewer electives, shuttering libraries and cutting after-school programs, among other things.
A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman said Tuesday that the governor is eager to hear alternatives.
"As the governor said last week, if the Legislature proposes other ways to cut spending, the governor is willing to consider it," the spokeswoman, Camille Anderson, said.
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