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A Weblog by
Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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April 07, 2006

The honest liberal

Phil Angelides continues to stake his claim as the honest liberal in the race for governor. Until recently he was laying out some very expensive priorities while pretending that they could be paid for with little more than a return to the tax rates on the wealthy that were in place under Pete Wilson (and Ronald Reagan). But every day he is getting more and more forceful in stating the case for a much larger tax increase, one big enough to close the budget gap, increase school funding beyond the level required by Proposition 98, and roll back recent increases in college tuition.

Today, Angelides said he believes that increasing school funding – and raising the taxes to pay for it – will be the “defining issue” in the Democratic primary and in the general election, if he is the nominee. He even said it is the “most important issue for decades to come.”

“I am going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that California schools are fully funded,” he said in a press conference at the union headquarters of the California Federation of Teachers, which has endorsed his campaign.

Although Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget for 2006-07 would increase school funding by more than $4 billion and fully fund Proposition 98 – giving the schools every dollar they would have received next year if he had kept his now infamous “deal” with the education community -- there’s still a dispute over $3 billion the schools say they were shorted in 2004-05 and 2005-06 combined. John Mockler, who wrote Prop. 98, tells me that the schools could be made whole if that outstanding balance were paid as a one-time appropriation to education, or a series of payments over time that need not increase the base upon which future budgets are built. This essentially matches the position of Senate Leader Don Perata.

But Angelides says he wants to go further. Today he said for the first time that he would repay that disputed money, over time, and build it into the Prop. 98 base, guaranteeing that future budgets would exceed what’s now required by law. He would also build back into the schools budget an additional $1.7 billion that everyone, including the governor, the teachers union and legislative leaders, agree must be restored over time according to the formulas in the constitution.

Steve Westly also pledges to “fully fund” the schools. But he has yet to define what that means to him, nor say how he would do it, other than by chasing down tax cheats and tweaking lottery prize formulas. Neither is a very reliable funding source for such an ambitious goal.

The governor’s position, meanwhile, can best be described as “figuring it out as we go along.” For next year, he is proposing to give the schools about $1.7 billion more than Prop. 98 requires, by his calculation and that of the legislative analyst, depending on you treat $400 million that’s dedicated to after-school programs required by Prop. 49. And while he denies that the state legally owes the $3 billion that is the focus of Angelides plan, it’s clear the governor would like to cut a deal that puts the state on a path to restoring that money, to lessen the political damage if nothing else. But he’s made it clear that this would have to be done without raising taxes, which makes it pretty difficult to do.