(05-27) 04:00 PDT Sacramento - --
More than 200 state parks would be closed, college students would no longer receive Cal Grants and millions of Californians would lose health and welfare assistance under the latest proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to deal with the state budget crisis.
But even as the governor's proposed cuts were being announced, state finance officials were scrambling to figure out how to close the newest gap: a $3 billion hole created in part by the worsening economy.
Last week, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said the state's budget deficit now stands at $24.3 billion - $3 billion worse than the $21.3 billion estimate Schwarzenegger had planned for.
The changing deficit estimates and the governor's budget revisions are frustrating lawmakers.
"This is creating chaos in this legislative process," said Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, chairwoman of the budget committee that includes lawmakers from both houses of the Legislature.
"We continue to get revised figures and nobody knows what to work with," she said.
Ana Matosantos, Schwarzenegger's chief deputy finance director, said the state is facing an unprecedented fiscal problem and finance officials are working as fast as they can. She wouldn't say how the governor would fill the additional $3 billion hole, but added the proposal would be ready Friday.
California's financial morass has been thickening by the day despite Schwarzenegger and the Legislature enacting in February a budget that would solve a nearly $42 billion deficit by the middle of next year through cuts, temporary tax increases and borrowing that required voter approval.
Following the defeat last week of five of six budget-related measures, Schwarzenegger said the message from voters was to balance the budget through cuts rather than through borrowing, raising taxes or accounting gimmicks.
With the governor remaining adamant about not raising taxes and avoiding budget maneuvering to solve the state's $24.3 billion deficit, chances are that his ideas to close the remaining $3 billion gap will come from more spending cuts.
On Tuesday, the governor's finance officials released the following details on how the governor would cut $5.5 billion through June 2010:
-- $750 million from the University of California and California State University systems, bringing the total reduction over two fiscal years to nearly $2 billion.
-- $10.3 million - Eliminate all state general fund spending for UC Hastings College of Law.
-- $173 million - Eliminate new Cal Grants.
-- $70 million - Eliminate general fund support for state parks, potentially closing 80 percent of them.
-- $247.8 million - Eliminate the Healthy Families program, which provides health care to nearly 1 million poor children.
-- $1.3 billion - Eliminate the CalWorks program, which primarily helps unemployed single mothers find jobs.
-- $809 million - Release nonviolent, non-serious, non-sex offenders one year early, and reduce the Corrections Department's contract work, rehabilitation and education programs.
Some proposed cuts, such as a $55.5 million reduction in the AIDS Drug Assistance Program and other state Office of AIDS programs, would be life-threatening, Courtney Mulhern-Pearson, policy and legislative associate for San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said.
"We were expecting cuts, but this is much, much worse than what we were expecting," said Mulhern-Pearson, adding that about 35,000 low-income Californians with AIDS rely on the drug assistance program.
Schwarzenegger's plan would force AIDS patients to bear more of the cost for medication while reducing or eliminating HIV/AIDS programs such as counseling, monitoring and educational services.
Another problem with making drastic cuts or eliminating programs is that the state would lose out on billions of federal matching dollars, lawmakers said.
For example, California would lose $500 million in federal funding if it decides to eliminate Healthy Families, and the state would lose more than $4 billion if CalWorks program is halted.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), said a round of cuts on all programs would have to be considered before "wholesale elimination of programs."
But determining the size of the state's budget hole, which has been a constantly changing number, is imperative, she said.
"I'm not ready to panic right now," Bass said. "We just need to take a deep breath and we need to have a real objective assessment of where the (deficit) is."
E-mail Matthew Yi at myi@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
No comments:
Post a Comment