It may have been a sign. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s web site crashed in the midst of the live webcast of yesterday’s state budget signing ceremony. Perhaps it marked the late-breaking bad karma of this budget process, or of the line item vetoes yet to be unveiled.
While Schwarzenegger’s web site was soon up and running again — press secretary Aaron McLear, apologizing to Net viewers for the inconvenience, said the mishap was due to a brief “problem with our database” — there was more serious grumbling to come, and even some real pain, in the $703 million in line item vetoes Schwarzenegger promised over a month ago to seal a budget deal.
The sharpest pain may be in the governor’s elimination of $55 million to help the homeless mentally ill. Most accounts are that the program has been a good start, and Schwarzenegger himself has praised it. Beyond the humanity of the program, deranged people living on the street have become a significant problem in several California cities, notably San Francisco, where they have become a blight on the tourist experience.
The state investing in programs like this is good business. But Schwarzenegger cut it, in what may be a sign that further major budget cuts will be slashing not so much into the elusive “waste, fraud, and abuse” as into programs of need.
Our friends on the far right, ever attuned to the symbolic, are upset about Schwarzenegger not cutting $6 million for the University of California’s labor center, which they view as a hotbed of socialism. The one reader who commented on the right-wing Flash Report site yesterday railed against this, urging the political demise of the “Austrian socialist” and “illegal immigrant.” That would be California’s movie superstar-turned-centrist Republican governor.
Schwarzenegger actually did cut it once — perhaps mindful of the fact that it was used to organize against him when he ran in the 2003 recall — but probably found it more trouble than it’s worth for the relatively small amount of money involved.
One very large amount of money is the more than $300 million eliminated from MediCal spending. It’s described by administration officials as a cut that won’t impact the health care caseload of low-income people who use the program. Why not? Because the program has been overfunded.
How long has that been going on?
There are certainly significant efficiencies to be found in state government, as there are in any very large organization that has been little examined for many years. That was the point of Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review (CPR).
Unfortunately, the CPR fell victim to internal fighting in the earlier version of the Schwarzenegger Administration. I don’t recall a group of conservative Republican senators making a big fuss over that.
Of course, the CPR certainly wasn’t perfect. For one thing, while it was doing an effective job of identifying possible efficiencies in government operations and spending — a project that takes time — its charge didn’t seem to extend to an inventory of another form of government spending. Tax expenditures are tax breaks. Sometimes they stimulate economic development, and sometimes they simply don’t.
The conservative Republican holdouts actually fought hard behind the scenes to preserve one of the most questionable big tax breaks, that for yacht owners. Which actually matches up pretty well on a dollar-for-dollar basis with the program for the mentally ill homeless. Perhaps the homeless can live on the yachts when their owners aren’t off sailing.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum.
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In the abstract, the yacht and airplane purchase tax breaks don’t make sense. In the real world, because of the cost of those purchases and the fact that other states have these tax breaks, California is faced with 2 choices: have the tax break, or don’t have the tax break and watch as all the transactions are structured to occur in places that do have that tax break. It’s really not that hard to arrange to buy a boat in Arizona, have it delivered in Mexico, and then sail it back to California, or to buy an airplane in another state and fly it back to California.
As for the Homeless Mentally Ill program, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen too many “funny numbers” showing the success of social programs to be ready to trust that this program actually accomplishes its objectives.
You do, I trust, realize that you are making a suicidal argument.
Interesting point, unfortunately.
>The simple truth is that no democrat or republican legislator or governor is willing to sacrifice his or her career to run against the grain laid down by the special interest constituencies and ideology police, which combine annually to ensure that we have a budget of accounting tricks.
Yes, KK, that is certainly true about activists, but we’re dealing here with elected state legislators, who are supposed to be more than knee-jerk activists.
>Kandy Kid :
No offense taken my friend Solon. Anyone who runs 14 miles today can take rhetorical license at my expense.
Most conservative and liberal activists live unexamined political lives, knowing little of the details of their favorite policy proposals and rarely considering alternatives. Even those committed enough to visit legislative offices can rarely speak beyond the talking points provided by their organizers. Sensible is the wrong word, but most activists are dedicated, yet uninformed.
The intellectual failure of the Senate Republican Caucus tells me a lot.
>Hap Hazard :
It was interesting that nobody in the republican caucus mentioned CPR in the call for cuts in spending. I wonder if Finance is also to blame, as I know they hated the idea of OMB. But the yacht and airplane tax break is the worst.
Aug 25, 2007 08:55 PM
KK,
Thanks.
Now, let me set the record straight. I don’t run, I walk. Have a bad right knees that ended by running career after three slow marathons. Turned to walking as a way of staying out there. I manage to partake in 8-10 events each year. Today’s 14 was a training walk for a half marathon I have coming up in six weeks.
Now off to finish my lunch and rest up. Chap with all you nice folks later.
Jeeez, BB. In your reaction to NickM, you kind of make Hap Hazard’s point. A rational discussion of issues – pro’s and con’s of budget implications should not be suicidal. But the basis of discussion and compromise, AND prioritization. The power to tax is often the power to destroy, and I saw it decimate the shipbuilding industry in New England. On the other hand, closing facilities which ostensibly assist the mentally ill sounds tragic. However, from my brief analysis of the state budget, Prop 63 added an additional billion dollars to assist the mentally ill, a 25% increase, last year.
I think in other words just as the recent blue ribbon commission on education said schools were a mess, but to just throw more money at it without sound goals and measurement of outcomes was foolish as well.
Frankly, and with all due respect to Nick, what he is saying is politically idiotic.
If you want to start a serious discussion about necessary trade-offs in Calfornia’s fiscal affairs, you don’t start it by championing the demise of a successful program and the continuance of tax breaks for yacht owners.
This is Politics 101.
I shouldn’t have to explain this.
But on the evidence, it does seem necessary.
The righty wingnuts will never get it. That’s why they’re righty wingnuts.
Just because it claims to help the blind, the lame or the halt, does not make it does so. That’s the point.
Oh, and Ann(lol) Very thoughtful comments. thks
Frankly, JT, no one has presented a smidgen of credible evidence to suggest that the program is not what it claims to be.
The serious conservative argument is that cities will find the money to fund it.
Maybe the people who think it’s a bad program should go to the Flash Report. It can use the traffic.
I think some people just don’t understand politics and how things play outside their narrow ideological set.
Whether what they are saying is right or wrong — and the weight of evidence suggests they are wrong — what they are saying is, frankly, politically dumb.
Beyond a certain point in this business, people either get it. Or they don’t get it.
I think, after the political debacle of the budget stall, it’s time to stop molly-coddling.
There are serious things to say about California’s chronic fiscal crisis. They’re not being said, especially from the far right, which seems to exist in a political fantasy world.
These are people who can’t even raise the operating budget of their own political party.
There is a dysfunctional ultra-government faction and a dystfunctional anti-government faction in California.
Both have caused the crisis. But the latter is the most divorced from reality.
There is a small group that will never ever ever get it. No matter what.
The astonishing thing is that the Nicks and JTs of the world will come and argue with a moderate, who is, from the perspective of an actual liberal, actually too budget-hawkish and not sufficiently supportive of the social-welfare approach (single payer healthcare including mental health, with tightly-overseen community integrated institutions for the mentally ill).
Re: sensible conservatives, I quite like Hap and KK.
Oh, and for the general “sunday bbq” subject that comes up from time to time — those who like meat might enjoy this recipe:
http://auros.livejournal.com/250623.html
I used to say to the Rob Stutzmans of the world, when they were busily leading Arnold Schwarzenegger into his 2005 debacle, that California is not Utah.
But the truth of the matter is that Utah is more left than what they had in mind, since it is, under a Republican governor, no less, now part of the anti-greenhouse gas bandwagon.
I used to say to the Rob Stutzmans of the world, when they were busily leading Arnold Schwarzenegger into his 2005 debacle, that California is not Utah.
But the truth of the matter is that Utah is more left than what they had in mind, since it is, under a Republican governor, no less, now part of the anti-greenhouse gas bandwagon.
This is the same stupid debate that wasted 2 months. Republicans, get real or get lost.
A comment on the above referenced Prop. 63 and a 25% increase next year which can be used the mentally ill. Prop. 63 funding cannot be used for supplanting other programs. This is the argument the Gov. used in cutting the program…and, unfortunatley, this (ir)rational will now be tied up in the courts, all the while hundreds of mentally disabled (most with drug and alcohol addictions) will be back on the streets, alleys, parks, freeway underpasses and sofa surfing. The Integrated Homeless Program for Adults Seriously Mentally Ill is (was) a proven success which gave counties needed flexibility in providing services (medical, housing, food, education, jobs, couneling, etc.). The core of this program is (was) the family-based element of it…that being, these folks need a consistent and regular “feeding” of giving and earning. That being said, vital government support to aiding the mentally disabled has been significantly underfunded in California for decades. This is one of the reasons our homeless mentally ill have and are increasing, much to the detriment to our cities (which Bill correctly points out), as well as to these ill folks themselves. If society has any responsibility, it is to those who cannot care for themselves. We who live well in society have a social and moral responsibilty to help others. Those on the starboard need to come about.
I lol because the comments are laughable.
I lol because the comments are laughable.
< John Thomas Flynn :
Just because it claims to help the blind, the lame or the halt, does not make it does so. That’s the point.
Oh, and Ann(lol) Very thoughtful comments. thks
Aug 26, 2007 02:29 PM
Well, when the bitter enders stick to the bitter end …
Brian, no fair cheating with facts now …
>Brian Lungren :
A comment on the above referenced Prop. 63 and a 25% increase next year which can be used the mentally ill. Prop. 63 funding cannot be used for supplanting other programs.
It would be amusing that people use rejected arguments to maintain their 25% support level in the popular debate were it not so foolish …
>Len :
This is the same stupid debate that wasted 2 months. Republicans, get real or get lost.
Aug 26, 2007 04:17 PM
As I understand it, there is no supplanting of other programs with Prop. 63 funds. If that is not correct, then I stand corrected; but, either way, funding for mental health issues have been sorely underfunded for decades…this is the focal point of my missives.
I’m not disagreeing.
… The governor’s people suggest, as I understand it, that local governments can pick up the slack with regard to the program for the homeless mentally ill.
If the Gov.’s people suggest that, then I believe they are wrongly suggesting. The program they cut was in just 34 of our 58 counties, with the rural ones being left in the cold, as usual. The State should and needs to be the leader on this issue…not the locals (although I do believe in more power to the locals…but in this case, I do not). If this Gov. wants to be a leader in global warning because of its affect statewide, nationally and internationally; then, dammit, this Gov. needs to be a leader in the plight of the mentally disabled. The mentally disabled, too, have no borders.
“The Year of Health Care Reform in California”–Is This the Way It’s Going to End?
By Anthony Wright Executive Director of Health Access California So, it’s official. If no positive health expansions are passed,…
Incidentally, NWN passed 38,000 comments sometime in the last week.