By John Laird, Chair, Assembly Budget Committee

The Governor is trying to develop public support for his proposal for across-the-board budget cuts in the event a state budget is not approved on time. An on-time budget is a goal I share, but not if the price is a “robocut” system that would cut education and transportation as equally as prisons, irrespective of voter priorities.

The Governor has proposed a budget that uses the state credit card to create billions more in debt, leaves a nearly $5 billion structural deficit in place and hits hard on education, transportation and seniors. Yet instead of working to submit to the legislature a balanced budget, he is pushing four proposals for the November ballot that if enacted as proposed, would not benefit the 2005-06 state budget by one dime. The robocut system is one such proposal.

The public must understand the proposal beyond the superficial daily spin. The non-partisan Legislative Analyst estimates the impact of the Governor’s proposal over current minimum funding is a $4 billion cut each year to public education’s long-term annual funding guarantee. And, should an inevitable economic downturn within the next few years trigger the robocuts, the minimum guarantee to education would be $9 billion less each year by the 2014-15 budget. That’s why I call the Governor’s proposal a “Trojan Humvee” – under the guise of “budget reform” is an assault on education funding minimums approved by voters as Proposition 98.

The Governor challenged the legislature to put his robocut proposal on the ballot by March 1 or face an initiative drive to do so. Yet ACA1x4, the legislation introduced in the Assembly, was amended less than a week before his arbitrary deadline. Little more than a week ago, even as Finance Director Tom Campbell was asking the Committee on Budget Process to place this on the ballot, he acknowledged that more amendments to ACA1x4 are yet to come. This demonstrates the difficulty with setting artificial deadlines on a proposal that would have major impacts on an already complicated system.

There are three primary areas of concern with ACA1x4. First and foremost, if a budget is not approved on time, the clock would start ticking toward automatic budget cuts. The measure is misleading because it locks in transportation and education spending, just as the voters did last fall with city and county revenues. Yet each of these areas would then be subject to automatic cuts, regardless of voter priorities. Only debt service and still-undefined programs required under the U.S. constitution would be exempt. It would make more sense to elect a computer to statewide office because under the Governor’s proposal, it would be deciding whether environmental protection or prisons are more important budget priorities.

Second, Propositions 98 (education) and 42 (transportation) would be rewritten to remove what budget flexibility there is in these matters. Two years after Proposition 98 was approved by voters in 1988, then-Governor Deukmejian and business interests insisted on a voter-approved change that allowed lower minimum funding levels in bad economic times and then allowed levels to move back up in good economic times. ACA1x4 would go back to the original inflexible way–and then subject education to automatic budget cuts.

ACA1x4 locks in education funding in a way that it ratchets down minimum funding levels, and does not provide an opportunity for them to move up. State Superintendent Jack O’Connell said at our public hearing that it would lock California education into the basement, as California is 44th in per capita school spending among the states, and there it would stay.

Third, the robocut option rewards partisan gridlock, rather than provides incentives to resolve budget differences. One third of the legislature could block a budget in order to force the automatic cuts. It could be legislators who desire deep program cuts, or others who might want the cuts in order to build support for higher revenues. Either way, it is better to find a system that encourages more cooperation, rather than rewards a minority for not working together.

The non-partisan Legislative Analyst states that budget shortfalls are driven by policy choices, not autopilot spending. We should be focusing the public on the difficult decisions we are going to have to make together to balance the budget, not on a system that would further remove their control over priorities.

What California do we want in ten or twenty years? A California that provides a sound education system, a balanced transportation system that works, and planning for our aging population as the first baby boomers turn sixty during this next budget year? Do we want tomorrow’s California working under our current water, transportation and education infrastructure? Do we want new debt in that future as the way to balance this year’s budget?

That’s the discussion we should be having. And we should be having it through a system that empowers individual participation and doesn’t tie our hands with a robocut formula that doesn’t serve our desires for California’s future. The Governor was most successful last year when he worked on problems in a bipartisan way. When he’s ready to articulate a successful vision for the California we want for the next generations, I am ready to join him to invest in that dream.

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Assemblymember John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) is Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee.