Proposals would cut benefits for California employees 25% to 40%: In an analysis of two concepts, the nonprofit California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility warns that the state's five biggest pension funds are in precarious financial conditions.
Think of it as hire education
Decade after decade, students of all races from poor and middle-class families across the state and around the world — often the first in their families to attend college — earned degrees and became teachers, nurses, engineers and entrepreneurs.
And now that great institution is being turned into a mediocrity by budget cuts. State universities have been forced to limit course offerings and dump staff while jacking up fees, and they've turned away students in droves while preparing for the possibility of even deeper cuts.
You don't need a doctorate to see the lunacy in that. As Linscheid noted, the Public Policy Institute of California has projected a recovering economy, not too far down the road, that will create more jobs for college graduates than California can supply.
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In 1990, Linscheid said, the Cal State budget and the state prison budget were roughly the same. Today, the state prison budget is only about 10% less than the Cal State, UC and community college budgets combined. Meanwhile, the number of inmates has shot up from 25,000 to 175,000 over the last 20 years, thanks largely to law-and-order initiatives backed by the prison guards union. The union bankrolls politicians like Gov. Jerry Brown, too, and reaps huge benefits, but they come at the expense of school funding.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block recently wrote in The Times that of the 42 Republicans in our state Legislature, 29 are products of California's public system of higher education. They got a great bargain, but not a single one of them has supported a Brown proposal — balance the budget half with cuts and half with a temporary extension of existing tax increases — that would maintain a barely acceptable level of quality in the Cal State system and help students avoid crippling tuition hikes.
Our priorities are out of whack, state tax structure has been screwed up since Proposition 13, and a disengaged public wakes up only often enough to make things worse with ballot initiatives. As wealth becomes all the more concentrated at the top, we need more than ever a state university system that can help balance the playing field.
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Make state government more efficient, less expensive. Having four separate agencies controlling finance and taxes, and three separate entities covering education, seems like overkill. And do we really need a lieutenant governor?
Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed many solutions for California's political and economic crises. Yet there's one rock the governor could lift higher to find big savings: the duplication of state offices. Many could be consolidated and in some cases eliminated.
Brown made a good start in January when he eliminated the secretary of education post, which was, as one pundit said last year, "about as useful as a third nostril." But unfortunately, California still has a few more extraneous "nostrils." For example, we still elect a superintendent of public instruction — annual salary, $151,000 — in addition to having a state Department of Education and a state Board of Education. All of these offices have staffs that cost a lot of money. Do we really need three separate agencies for education?
And does anyone know what the lieutenant governor does? Political insiders have jokingly said the job description is to "get up, read the paper, see if the governor is dead; if not, go back to sleep." Yet for this largely ceremonial post, the lieutenant governor gets paid about $130,000 annually and is served by staff members who also pull down good salaries. Can't we simply eliminate this office and let the secretary of state fill in when the governor is out of state or incapacitated?
Another example of what appears to be pointless duplication is in the area of finance and budgets. Does anybody know what the Board of Equalization does? It is one of at least four governmental agencies that deal with some aspect of taxes, finances, budgets and assets. The others are the state controller, state treasurer and the Department of Finance.
The website of the Board of Equalization says it collects revenue for the state in the form of sales taxes and other taxes. The four board members, elected from massive districts with more than 9 million residents each, earn an annual salary of about $130,000 apiece. Do you remember who you voted for to fill your district's seat on this board?
The state controller, with an annual salary of $139,000, acts as the state's chief fiscal officer to make sure that the governor's proposed $127-billion budget is spent properly, in addition to helping administer two of the nation's largest public pension funds. The controller also serves as an ex officio member of the Board of Equalization. Is such redundancy necessary? The state treasurer (salary: $139,000 a year) is responsible for the state's investments and financing. Meanwhile, the administration of the state's budgets, financial analyses and planning is under the Department of Finance.
Each of these agencies is served by a sizable staff. Couldn't we combine two or three of the agencies into a single one by streamlining their responsibilities and duties?
Believe me, I'm not a knee-jerk, anti-tax "cut government to the bone" type of guy. Government performs essential duties that help produce something called "civilization," of which I am quite fond. And in my view, too many anti-tax zealots are the ultimate "free lunchers" who want all the good things government does for them but don't want to pay for them. But there seems to be a great deal of overlap in some of these offices.
As long as we're cleaning out the closet, let me propose a related idea that might seem radical but actually is familiar. Instead of electing all these offices, why not have the governor appoint most, if not all of the statewide offices and create a cabinet, much like the president does?
The current setup of elected officials is unnecessarily expensive. First, taxpayers have to pay for all those statewide elections for each office, and frankly, most voters know little about the offices or candidates. We usually end up electing a host of competing personalities who have little incentive to act as a team serving the state's chief executive. Each elected official rules over his or her private fiefdom, sometimes as a springboard to personal ambitions that may conflict with the goals of the governor. They may even be elected from different political parties, as was the case when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor and John Garamendi was lieutenant governor.
Having the governor appoint his or her own cabinet would save time and money on elections, and the implementation of state business would be better coordinated and more effective.
With little relief in sight for the state's fiscal crisis, we need to rethink these matters. Conventional solutions won't do.
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