| Californians once took great pride in our educational system. We built one of the greatest public education systems in the world, both K-12 and higher ed. We passed prop 98 to protect education funding and a majority has consistenly supported school funding at higher levels. However, in the last few years, things have been slipping. The Republicans have been working to subtly undermine the grounds that Prop 98 has stood upon, and they have their sights set on bigger chunks of money in the next budget fight.
Today, educational advocates are going to testify in the budget conference committee. From janitors to teachers, aides to superintendents, the entire school team needs to be represented as we work towards protecting the future of this state. Education is simply THE key to our economic future, if we neglect it now, we solve no long-term problems and only create more.
The hearing begins this morning at 10:30 in the Capitol, but the fight will go all the way through a deal. And, according to State Controller John Chiang, we need to have a deal by June 15:
The cash shortage will be four times as bad as this past winter, when California stopped infrastructure projects and delayed payments to vendors and refunds to taxpayers.
State Controller John Chiang told lawmakers Friday that declining tax revenue will cause the state's treasury to fall $2.1 billion into the red in July.
He urged lawmakers to pass a budget by the June 15 constitutional deadline. If they don't act quickly to cut spending or raise revenue, Chiang said the deficit will hit $14.3 billion by December.(News10 (AP) 6/1/09)
As we move forward over the next two weeks, we are surely going to try to see some attempts by interest groups to get their perspectives heard. However, given the time-sensitive nature of this, one has to wonder how much public input we are going to get. Crisis-based budgeting only breeds more crises. |
