A Democratic state budget proposal is back in the lap of lawmakers after a firm veto from the governor Thursday.
In a statement, Gov. Jerry Brown said the plan he received was not a “balanced solution” and that billions of dollars of debt would be added to the state’s total.
He re-emphasized his initial budget proposal with tax extensions and called on Republicans to vote for this plan. Otherwise, he said, lawmakers would be responsible for huge cuts to schools and public safety.
The Democratic plan passed by the legislature last Wednesday called for $300 million in cuts to the University of California and California State University systems.
For the UC, that would have meant a $150 million cut on top of the $500 milion cut already approved this year.
The plan also proposed $3.4 billion in deferred payments to K-12 schools, community colleges and the UC. These deferred payments would have forced schools to borrow funds to maintain their programs, as actual payments would have been pushed back to the next fiscal year.
While this method would have saved money now to pay later, it does not cut costs, said Steve Boilard, director of higher education for the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
This is likely why Brown said the suggestion did not address the budget shortfall, Boilard said.
This aspect, along with other so-called “smoke and mirrors” tactics, was not seen as a viable way to balance the state’s $26 billion gap, Boilard said.
“By vetoing the bill, the governor sends a hard signal that he wants an honest budget that permanently aligns spending,” he said.
To do this, the legislature could act in one of two ways, Boilard said. In one scenario, lawmakers might deal more across-the-board cuts and rely less on borrowing, a measure for which the governor has expressed disapproval.
With this plan, UC would likely receive less state funding.
The budget could also be resolved through a deal with Republicans to support tax increases.
In the governor’s initial budget proposal in January, he called for spending cuts and increased taxes. Though Republicans rejected the tax increase suggestion, Boilard said Brown may try to trade support for his plan with the party’s interest in larger reforms for public pensions.
This plan would create a November ballot initiative asking voters to extend an income and sales tax increase set to expire on July 1. The measure was originally used to balance the California budget in 2009, along with a higher vehicle license tax, according to the Tax Policy blog of the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization.
This proposal would prevent further cuts to the UC and higher education. But it may run into difficulty at the polls, said Susanne Lohmann, a UCLA political science professor.
Buzzwords like accessibility and affordability have run parallel with concerns of higher fee increases at public universities like the UC. But while many see affordability as a divide between high and low incomes, Lohmann said it is actually a problem of age-related issue disparity.
Older baby boomers vote at higher rates and tend to focus on pocketbook issues like high prices for medication or property taxes. As a result, Brown’s tax increases may seem unnecessary to an older generation that received free public education.
Wednesday’s budget proposal was pushed through without Republican support. Lawmakers only needed a majority vote, instead of the two-thirds quorum that was necessary in the past, a result of a constitutional amendment passed by voters in November.
In addition to this new law, legislators were also bound by a new law that denies them pay until they balance the budget.
Though the state legislature says it fulfilled its responsibility to file a budget proposal, the controller has contended that it was a plan that would not have balanced the budget.
This legal question is likely to be answered in the coming days.