CALIFORNIA Governor Jerry Brown on Friday, Jan. 9, released a proposed 2015-16 state budget, which calls for $113.3 billion in general fund spending.
Brown has proposed an increase in spending on public schools and health and human services, but tightened funding in other departments.
“We have a carefully balanced budget – more precarious than I would like,” Brown said, according to Reuters. “It’s not time for exuberant overkill.”
Education
The new budget provides an additional $8 billion toward K-12 schools and community colleges, including approximately $1 billion owed to schools during the recession.
“Gov. Brown’s budget proposal for community colleges is the best our system has seen in years,” California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice Harris said in a statement. “It proposes additional funding that will make seats available for 45,000 more students.”
The California State University system also received a promised 4 percent raise of $120 million, along with an extra $25 million to assist students in completing their degrees more quickly.
Brown also allocated $120 million toward the University of California system if it agreed to freeze tuition, but the UC said this funding was not enough.
“The $120 million is not chump change,” Brown said, citing that other departments did not receive additional money.
UC President Janet Napolitano said Friday in a statement that the university is down $460 million in funding compared to 2007, despite the fact it is educating thousands more California students.
In 2014, the UC Board of Regents approved a plan that would raise tuition across the university system by 5 percent throughout the next five years unless the state allocates additional funding to the approximately $2.8 billion it gave for 2014-15.
Brown, an active member of the Board of Regents, has encouraged a reduction of cost at the university by offering more online classes, limiting faculty and executive pay raises, and devoting more time to teaching instead of research.
Napolitano said she was disappointed with Brown’s proposal, but she said she expects to continue negotiating with him and other legislators before the final budget is approved.
Health and human services
The governor’s plan also proposes addressing the $72 billion unfunded liability for retiree health care benefits through an increase in contributions from the state and public employees.
A total of $142 billion will be devoted toward health and human services, $31 billion of which will come from the general fund. An estimated additional 248,800 Californians will be able to obtain health insurance through Medi-Cal with these additional funds.
Other costs
In addition to education and health care, the budget appropriates millions of dollars toward various purposes: $1.2 billion for workforce training, such as adult education and other programs; $1 billion for energy efficiency, low-carbon transportation, sustainable communities and high-speed rail via cap-and-trade revenue; $532 million from Proposition 1 for water recycling and groundwater sustainability, among other measures; an additional $180 million for court systems still recovering from previous financial cuts
Reactions to the new budget
Brown’s new plan has been met with some pressure from Democrats, who say the state should provide more assistance to Californians in hard financial times.
“We must continue to evaluate which of our General Fund programs and services are most effective and reinvest in them wisely and in a way that benefits Californians who are in the greatest need,” said Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, according to Los Angeles Times.
Republicans, on the other hand, have expressed support for the new budget because it saves the reserve. However, they criticized his lack of an economic plan for job growth.
“We’re a little disappointed that we didn’t hear much about jobs and the economy in there – how we’re going to grow the economy, how we’re going to create the environment to make jobs more available to Californians,” said Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), the top Republican on the Assembly Budget Committee, according to the Times.
Brown said he is sensitive the challenges of poverty, as he remembers helping mothers search for shelter at night during his time as mayor of Oakland.
He said California is doing more than many states to assist those in need, but said he needs to find a balance that secures the state’s financial footing to ensure that important programs are not cut in the future.
When Brown took office in 2011, he was faced with a $26 billion budget deficit.
“There is only so much money here,” he said. “It’s easy to say let’s do that, let’s do that. I look at it in the aggregate and the aggregate is the liabilities are far exceeding the surpluses that we are looking at.”
The final budget is due in June, and the upcoming fiscal year starts on July 1.
(With reports from Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle and The Sacramento Bee)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek January 14-16, 2015 Sec. A pg.1)
