Democratic controlled California Budget Balanced on Faulty Figures- deliberately

Los Angeles Times ^ | February 23, 2003 | Jeffrey L. Rabin

[Kay Soze]

Budget Balanced on Faulty Figures

As election neared, state leaders ignored warning signs of a faltering economy and made erroneous assumptions about future revenue. By Jeffrey L. Rabin Times Staff Writer

February 23, 2003

Last August, Gov. Gray Davis and members of the Legislature were in a bind: The state budget was two months late, election day was fast approaching and they still had a gap of more than $10 billion to fill.

Rather than confront the magnitude of that challenge, however, California's elected leaders resorted to budget tricks, ignored evidence that the economy was faltering and made false assumptions about future revenue and the effect of proposed spending cuts. The result was a budget that was out of balance as soon as it was signed. And the spending plan has continued to dip into the red, deepening the current fiscal crisis.

A review of economic indicators and budget documents from last year reveals a host of ways in which state leaders papered over California's fiscal difficulties in an election year.

Among them:

During the budget negotiations, Davis' administration changed how it portrayed the state of the economy. Using those incorrect projections left the state with billions of dollars less revenue this year than the budget anticipated.

But last year, the Davis administration presented those estimates differently than it and other administrations had in the past.

In previous years, the estimates included in what is known as the "May revise" were based on the economy's annual performance for the year before and estimates of its performance in the year to come. In 2002, however, the Davis team crunched the numbers by comparing the economy in the fourth quarter of one year to the same period a year earlier.

The effect of that subtle shift was profound, both economically and politically Had Davis, then in the midst of a reelection campaign, used the annual figures, they would have shown that the number of jobs in California was expected to drop 0.5%. And the growth in income would have been just 1.5% during the same period -- paltry numbers for a governor defending the state of the California economy on his watch.

UCLA economists, who issue the most widely regarded California forecasts, predicted in late June that the number of jobs in California would grow by only 0.2% during 2002. Personal income was expected to increase just 1.2%.

Those predictions were available to Davis and the Legislature, but they did not take them into account. The budget was built using the administration's more optimistic assumptions.

[Kay Soze]

To Comply with the rules for posting LA Times articles I have posted only 20 % of the original Article ( 2249 of the 11166 characters or 20%)

Dewmocrats are in complete and total control of my state top - down.

This is what one gets when democrtas run somethin as complex as Calif!

ENRON had nothing on what Fienstien, Davis and boxer have done here

[Timesink]

This story is on the front page of today's LASlimes! How's that Recall Davis campaign going?

[litany_of_lies]

IMHO, this is strictly CYA by the LAT. I would bet a substantial sum that they and the Chron knew that the numbers were being fudged ahead of the election, and refused to devote the resources to fully investigating it. After all, Simon's bogus criminal indictment (thrown out of court) was so much more important. So now that they have their man safely in office, they can say "see, we exposed it!" when it is of no value (except to the recall campaign, which is a huge long-shot).

This reporting is totally worthless, like all the WaPo articles after impeachment that showed that the VRWC had been right all along about the facts and circumstances of the Lewsinsky matter.

One thing in particular was the constant reporting during impeachment that Clinton was sooooo good at "compartmentalizing" and that he could still run the country. After impeachment, there was a torrent of articles about how he was singularly obseesed with it, and nothing else was gettin done. They knew this was the case during impeachment, and refused to report it. "Better late than never" doesn't apply to good reporting.

[MarkM]

You mean the Democrats lied!? Well, I'm shocked, just shocked to find out this was going on.

[coloradan]

What?! Democrat party members lying? Say it ain't so!

[NormsRevenge]

Suhprize Suhprize !!!

The demRatic socialzits stoop at nothing to retain power.

You saw it by the national party and the california party is no better.

[timestax]

The DemonCRAPS are such fibbers!!

[hattend]

bttt

[evad]

What?! Democrat party members lying? Say it ain't so!

This is basic RATonomics 101..nothing here.

Move on.

[Defender2]

Figures, Hollywood controls California. Shame, shame.

[John Jorsett]

I want to measure the size of the impact crater the California economy makes when the clowns in Sacramento get done flying it into the ground. I'll have to do it from aerial photographs of course, since it's gonna be big.

[flamefront]

Measure the outflow of families and businesses to see the amount.

[jonascord]

Ain't going to happen. Feinstein and Boxer will go to the Whitehouse, and promise to vote for National Concealed Carry, or some such, the Republicans will actually believe them, send a check for 50 billion to Sacremento, and Babs and Di will have a brain fade when the vote comes up...

[snopercod]

I hate these false outrage articles from the lamestream media. For the last few years, the LA Slimes has been carrying water for Davis and consciously ignoring what everybody else in the real world knew in 2001: California was headed for technical bankruptcy.

From May, 2001 for example: CALIFORNIA'S BLACK-RUPTCY [IBD Editorial]

California’s political class is fiddling while state finances burn. The fiscal recklessness shown by California’s politicians may be unsurpassed by any state in American history.

The Times in large part made that possible.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

What is it they say,"figures don't lie but LIARS FIGURE"!

[blake6900]

The Los Angeles Times knew this well before the election in November. Yet, they said nothing at the time. Instead, they and the San Francisco Chronicle ran hit-piece after hit-piece about William Simon and now, after the smoke has settled and their man Gray Davis has been reelected, they've come out with this revelation.

In what amounts to little more than a pathetic attempt at objective journalism, they now let the cat out of the bag as if they've done a public service by doing so. However, anyone with an ounce of sense knew all this before the election. If anything, we're finding out it's worse than we thought and the Times is basically trying to save its' own credibility.

Nice try but they had none to begin with. Apparently the Times didn't have another anti-Israel story ready for print...

[litany_of_lies]

Good archive catch from IBD. See my post #3.

The Times, Chronicle, Mercury-News, Bee, etc. were all asleep at the switch, and were too busy writing negative articles about Bill Simon to be bothered with boring stuff like the state going mega-broke.

[litany_of_lies]

It seems that if someone hasn't done so already, someone needs to start an Internet hard-news daily publication dedicated to CA only. to counter the hard-left news and info monopoly of the CA print press.

If you guys at the Daily Cal (or is it Cal-Patriot?) in Berkeley are lurking, that sounds like a prosperous venture just waiting to happen (if well run and financed).

[litany_of_lies]

Frightening thought of the day: Is Gray Davis, who must realize his political career is over, going to tank the CA economy in hopes of keeping the national economy from being prosperous, to improve Democrat hopes in 2004?

[tubebender]

The Dems ran the Ca budget into the financial graveyard so they could buy a few more votes and Doofus could extort $70,000,000 for his campaign. If Enron should to jail than Doofus should be there welcoming them.