The Salinas Californian

Budget battle looms

January 11, 2008  

By JAKE HENSHAW, DAWN WITHERS and SUNITA VIJAYAN  

SACRAMENTO - Drastic state budget cuts proposed by the governor Thursday could mean more crowded classrooms, higher hospital bills, delayed road construction, smaller checks for the elderly and disabled and fewer state parks for Monterey County.

Faced with a $14.5 billion shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a 10 percent across-the-board cut that would leave every state-funded agency, program and institution scrambling to meet its goals and responsibilities.

"We are facing tough times, but with tough

times come historic opportunities," Schwarzenegger said, referring to his plan to level out spending by saving money in good financial years for the bad ones.

Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, disagreed.

"This is a brutal proposal," Caballero said. "It hurts everybody. The challenge is to figure out if there is another approach."

Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, was critical of several cuts, including those proposed for education and the closing of 48 state parks, including 12 in his district. In Monterey County, Fremont Peak, Fort Ord Dunes and Limekiln south of Big Sur would be closed.

Still, Maldonado said, "everything needs to be on the table, and everyone should be at the table. It is a fiscal crisis."

The proposed spending plan would be enacted by July 1, the start of the 2008-09 fiscal year, but the governor also called a special session seeking $3.3 billion in cuts for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

In Monterey County, the proposed 2008-09 budget would cut significant funding from the county's Health Department, social services department and Natividad Medical Center, said Rosie Pando, assistant county administrative officer.

"The state does control a lot of county resources," said county budget director Dewayne Woods.

Pando said county budget planners and administrators will work on an analysis of the proposal over the next two weeks for county supervisors.

Small campus=big pain

The county's Office of Education Superintendent Nancy Kotowski said the governor's budget could have a major effect on MCOE's $900 million K-12 budget.

Kotowski said impacts would likely include more crowded classrooms, fewer bus services, fewer before- and after-school programs, and less money for special education.

"We'll be looking very closely at our budget," she said. "We're going to look at our current spending, tighten our belts and do budget revisions."

Higher-education institutes in the region such as Hartnell College in Salinas and California State University, Monterey Bay won't escape the fiscal pain.

The governor's budget would eliminate $313 million from the California State University system.

Stephen Reed, associate vice president of CSUMB, said Thursday that any cuts would hit harder at the 11-year-old, 4,000-student campus than at others.

"For a new and small campus, a 10 percent reduction is much harder to achieve," Reed said, "and it comes at a higher cost than from a large, more mature campus."

The budget cuts could force CSUMB to limit outreach plans that seek to attract more students from historically underserved areas, he said.

Revenue vs. cuts

Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, spoke Thursday against the education cuts and said he has always opposed across-the-board reductions.

Denham has introduced proposed constitutional amendments that include measures to require the governor to propose an independently certified, balanced budget; force 24-hour-a-day sessions if lawmakers miss the deadline to pass a budget; and to withhold legislators' pay until they do enact a budget.

"I just think we have to set priorities," Denham said. "That starts with educating our children, keeping our neighborhoods safe and funding public safety."

Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, said the proposed budget puts the governor's anti-spending approach into sharp focus.

"I think the real issue is everybody has been ... talking about cuts only," Laird said.

Along with the cuts, however, the $141 billion spending plan also seeks to raise revenue through efforts including an $11 fee on vehicle registrations and a 1.25 percent surcharge on property insurance to pay for firefighting improvements.

Caballero said fees may be appropriate in some cases, but called them a "very small piece of the mix." She urged the Legislature to also consider closing loopholes she said provide tax breaks for luxury items such as million-dollar vacation homes.

"The (wealth) gap is so huge," Caballero said. "(Closing the gap) is not easily done."

Laird and Caballero called for a full discussion of what services Californians want and how best to pay for them.

Hits to foster care, roads

Elliott Robinson, Monterey County Social Services director, said an $83.7 million proposed cut to statewide child welfare services would cause chaos for his department if adopted by the Legislature.

Robinson said the 10 percent reduction would impact how often social workers can visit children and the department's recruitment of qualified foster parents.

Foster families this month received their first cost-of-living raise since 2001.

Schwarzenegger also will resubmit a proposal the Legislature rejected last year to cut benefits for the children of welfare recipients if their parents fail to get jobs.

State subsidies for the elderly, blind and disabled also would be frozen through the end of the decade, while Medi-Cal funding would be cut by $1 billion.

"What you have are reductions in services without equitable reductions in mandates," Robinson said.

Transportation projects, on the other hand, have some protection from major cuts because of limitations on how the egislature can use money earmarked for such purposes, said Debbie Hale, executive director of the Transportation Agency for Monterey County.

But if budget cuts are maintained over the next two years, Hale said, major road improvement projects in the county would be delayed, including safety improvements along Highway 101 in Prunedale and at the Salinas Road and Airport Boulevard interchanges, scheduled to start in 2009.

"We're most concerned about the implications for the following year's budget," she said.

Monterey County is especially vulnerable to long-term cuts because it relies heavily on state funding to pay for road projects, she said.

Prison lay-offs proposed

The governor has also proposed the early release of 22,000 low-risk inmates over the course of two years and layoffs of about 2,000 correctional officers statewide.

It's unknown how many inmates would be released from Monterey County's two state prisons, said Seth Unger, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The Correctional Training Facility in Soledad has about 7,000 inmates, and the Salinas Valley State Prison, also in Soledad, has about 4,555.

Unger said the release would only affect inmates with no history of violence or sex offenses who were convicted of crimes such as low-level drug possession and burglary.

Public safety officials called cuts to anti-drug and anti-crime efforts alarming in light of the county's ongoing gang-related violence.

"(The governor's) taking some drastic measures on the state budget, and the impact will roll to the local level," county Sheriff Mike Kanalakis said. By JAKE HENSHAW, DAWN WITHERS and SUNITA VIJAYAN
 

SACRAMENTO - Drastic state budget cuts proposed by the governor Thursday could mean more crowded classrooms, higher hospital bills, delayed road construction, smaller checks for the elderly and disabled and fewer state parks for Monterey County.

Faced with a $14.5 billion shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a 10 percent across-the-board cut that would leave every state-funded agency, program and institution scrambling to meet its goals and responsibilities.

"We are facing tough times, but with tough

times come historic opportunities," Schwarzenegger said, referring to his plan to level out spending by saving money in good financial years for the bad ones.

Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, disagreed.

"This is a brutal proposal," Caballero said. "It hurts everybody. The challenge is to figure out if there is another approach."

Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, was critical of several cuts, including those proposed for education and the closing of 48 state parks, including 12 in his district. In Monterey County, Fremont Peak, Fort Ord Dunes and Limekiln south of Big Sur would be closed.

Still, Maldonado said, "everything needs to be on the table, and everyone should be at the table. It is a fiscal crisis."

The proposed spending plan would be enacted by July 1, the start of the 2008-09 fiscal year, but the governor also called a special session seeking $3.3 billion in cuts for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

In Monterey County, the proposed 2008-09 budget would cut significant funding from the county's Health Department, social services department and Natividad Medical Center, said Rosie Pando, assistant county administrative officer.

"The state does control a lot of county resources," said county budget director Dewayne Woods.

Pando said county budget planners and administrators will work on an analysis of the proposal over the next two weeks for county supervisors.

Small campus=big pain

The county's Office of Education Superintendent Nancy Kotowski said the governor's budget could have a major effect on MCOE's $900 million K-12 budget.

Kotowski said impacts would likely include more crowded classrooms, fewer bus services, fewer before- and after-school programs, and less money for special education.

"We'll be looking very closely at our budget," she said. "We're going to look at our current spending, tighten our belts and do budget revisions."

Higher-education institutes in the region such as Hartnell College in Salinas and California State University, Monterey Bay won't escape the fiscal pain.

The governor's budget would eliminate $313 million from the California State University system.

Stephen Reed, associate vice president of CSUMB, said Thursday that any cuts would hit harder at the 11-year-old, 4,000-student campus than at others.

"For a new and small campus, a 10 percent reduction is much harder to achieve," Reed said, "and it comes at a higher cost than from a large, more mature campus."

The budget cuts could force CSUMB to limit outreach plans that seek to attract more students from historically underserved areas, he said.

Revenue vs. cuts

Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Merced, spoke Thursday against the education cuts and said he has always opposed across-the-board reductions.

Denham has introduced proposed constitutional amendments that include measures to require the governor to propose an independently certified, balanced budget; force 24-hour-a-day sessions if lawmakers miss the deadline to pass a budget; and to withhold legislators' pay until they do enact a budget.

"I just think we have to set priorities," Denham said. "That starts with educating our children, keeping our neighborhoods safe and funding public safety."

Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, said the proposed budget puts the governor's anti-spending approach into sharp focus.

"I think the real issue is everybody has been ... talking about cuts only," Laird said.

Along with the cuts, however, the $141 billion spending plan also seeks to raise revenue through efforts including an $11 fee on vehicle registrations and a 1.25 percent surcharge on property insurance to pay for firefighting improvements.

Caballero said fees may be appropriate in some cases, but called them a "very small piece of the mix." She urged the Legislature to also consider closing loopholes she said provide tax breaks for luxury items such as million-dollar vacation homes.

"The (wealth) gap is so huge," Caballero said. "(Closing the gap) is not easily done."

Laird and Caballero called for a full discussion of what services Californians want and how best to pay for them.

Hits to foster care, roads

Elliott Robinson, Monterey County Social Services director, said an $83.7 million proposed cut to statewide child welfare services would cause chaos for his department if adopted by the Legislature.

Robinson said the 10 percent reduction would impact how often social workers can visit children and the department's recruitment of qualified foster parents.

Foster families this month received their first cost-of-living raise since 2001.

Schwarzenegger also will resubmit a proposal the Legislature rejected last year to cut benefits for the children of welfare recipients if their parents fail to get jobs.

State subsidies for the elderly, blind and disabled also would be frozen through the end of the decade, while Medi-Cal funding would be cut by $1 billion.

"What you have are reductions in services without equitable reductions in mandates," Robinson said.

Transportation projects, on the other hand, have some protection from major cuts because of limitations on how the egislature can use money earmarked for such purposes, said Debbie Hale, executive director of the Transportation Agency for Monterey County.

But if budget cuts are maintained over the next two years, Hale said, major road improvement projects in the county would be delayed, including safety improvements along Highway 101 in Prunedale and at the Salinas Road and Airport Boulevard interchanges, scheduled to start in 2009.

"We're most concerned about the implications for the following year's budget," she said.

Monterey County is especially vulnerable to long-term cuts because it relies heavily on state funding to pay for road projects, she said.

Prison lay-offs proposed

The governor has also proposed the early release of 22,000 low-risk inmates over the course of two years and layoffs of about 2,000 correctional officers statewide.

It's unknown how many inmates would be released from Monterey County's two state prisons, said Seth Unger, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The Correctional Training Facility in Soledad has about 7,000 inmates, and the Salinas Valley State Prison, also in Soledad, has about 4,555.

Unger said the release would only affect inmates with no history of violence or sex offenses who were convicted of crimes such as low-level drug possession and burglary.

Public safety officials called cuts to anti-drug and anti-crime efforts alarming in light of the county's ongoing gang-related violence.

"(The governor's) taking some drastic measures on the state budget, and the impact will roll to the local level," county Sheriff Mike Kanalakis said.