State Budget

Dan Walters: Newest state budget clash will be bloody

By Dan Walters - Published: 12:00 am

When Mac Taylor, the Legislature's chief budget adviser, declared this week that the state budget enacted just four months ago is already billions of dollars upside down, no one in the Capitol should have been surprised.

Top California officials' pay to be cut 18% in December

By Jim Sanders - Published: 12:00 am

Pay for California's top elected officials will be slashed by 18 percent next month, one year earlier than expected, to abide by an opinion issued Thursday from Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Salaries of elected officials

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators have agreed on a budget deal, but deficits are likely to persist and the state's economy shows no signs of a rebound. How did we get into this mess? Click here for a better perspective.

California Budget Q&A

By Steve Wiegand - Updated: Tuesday, June 23 2009 - 5:49 pm

Who came up with this budget-balancing plan?

It was sort of a group effort. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger offered up his version in May, after state finance officials put together a new forecast of how much revenue the state could expect to collect in the coming fiscal year, and what bills it might incur.

Here are answers to frequently asked questions.

OVERVIEW OF CALIFORNIA'S BUDGET CRISIS

Why does California seem to struggle with its budget every year? Is state spending really out of line, as Republicans suggest, or are Democrats right when they say we need more revenue? In this overview, Bee Columnist Dan Walters walks you through some mileposts on the road to this year's state budget stalemate.

Before 1978, fashioning a state budget each year was a fairly routine task. But the passage of Proposition 13 in June 1978 began a radical budgeting makeover. The measure slashed local property taxes, and state general fund spending jumped as the state assumed greater responsibility for schools and local services.

In 1988, even more pressure was put on the general fund when voters adopted Proposition 98, which sought to reserve a guaranteed portion -- 40 percent or more -- of the state's revenues for schools.

California weathered a severe recession in the early 1990's, but at the turn of the century the surging dot.com industry flooded state coffers. (See state spending in relation to personal income.) Revenues -- mostly income taxes -- skyrocketed to $75.7 billion in 2000-01. Under GOP Gov. Pete Wilson and then Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, state spending for schools and health care for the poor jumped sharply.

Click here to read more.

Source: California Department of Finance, Legislative Analyst's Office, Bee research by Dan Walters