Posted on 01/10/2006 1:42:13 PM PST by calcowgirl
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- California's tax revenues are surging ahead of expectations, giving an election-year jolt to the state budget and providing more money for public schools, health services and higher education.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday proposed a $125.6 billion spending plan that does not raise taxes, a 7 percent boost over last year. It also marks the first time in several years that the state projects enough tax revenue to cover spending without significant borrowing, a reversal from budget deficits that reached into the billions before Schwarzenegger took office.
The 2006-2007 budget proposal from the governor includes $97.9 billion in general fund spending and $25 billion in spending from special funds, which is money such as a gas tax that is dedicated to specific programs such as highway repairs.
The rest of the spending, $2.7 billion, is to repay bonds.
"This budget continues California on the path toward fiscal responsibility and economic recovery," Schwarzenegger said during a midday news conference.
Details of the budget plan were emerging, but the big winners appear to be public schools and health and human services agencies.
Weeks ago, Schwarzenegger proposed a $4.3 billion boost in funding for kindergarten through 12th grade education and community colleges. Education groups said they will seek even more money once the budget gets submitted to lawmakers, yet the increase has succeeded in partly defusing some of Schwarzenegger's most vocal critics.
Education groups attacked Schwarzenegger last year after he floated proposals about merit pay and teacher tenure, and failed to repay billions of dollars educators said he owed to public schools.
Education spending accounts for about half the state's annual budget.
Schwarzenegger also pledged to halt student fee increases in the California State University and University of California systems.
Students have faced five fee increases in a row under a deal the universities reached with Schwarzenegger. But Democrats and student groups said the increases amounted to a tax increase on the middle class and lower-income residents.
The governor also has tempered fears that he would neglect spending on social services as he sought to placate education groups with a huge spending boost.
On Monday, he proposed spending $72 million to enroll more children in the Medi-Cal and Healthy Families programs. The additional money is expected to provide medical services to about 300,000 uninsured children and is part of a $1.2 billion funding increase in health and human services programs.
By proposing increases in school and health funding, Schwarzenegger seeks to avoid an extended budget confrontation with the Democrats who control both houses of the state Legislature. Such a skirmish could complicate his re-election campaign and distract him from pushing the $222.6 billion public works spending plan he announced last week.
As part of that plan, he wants voters to approve about $25 billion in bonds this year.
I think you and I are talking about two different things. I was just trying to figure out the makeup of the 125.6 Billion dollar total budget. I found the 3 billion (or 2.7 billion) I was looking for. I had missed the "Select Bond Fund expenditures."
Re your comments, which pdf document are you looking at? I couldn't find the chart you were talking about.
Governor's proposed budget plan at a glance
The Associated Press
http://www.bakersfield.com/state_wire/story/5820331p-5836389c.html
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a $125.6 billion spending plan for the 2006-2007 fiscal year that does not raise taxes. It also seeks to pay off state debts to reduce the anticipated shortfall next year. Some details from the budget plan released Tuesday:
WINNERS
- Education: Proposes a record $54.3 billion for kindergarten through 12th grade education and community colleges. The governor's plan would provide $1.7 billion more than is required under the Proposition 98 funding guarantee and would increase per student spending to nearly $11,000 a year.
- Proposition 49: After-school programs approved by voters in 2002 will receive $428 million, the first funding ever for the program. Schwarzenegger sponsored the measure and helped get it approved.
- Public Health: Proposes $170 million aimed at providing health care over the next two years to 300,000 children that are now uninsured. The budget proposes $72 million to help counties and state agencies enroll children into public health care programs and another $100 million to help pay for the medical care.
- Transportation: Provides $1.2 billion to fully fund Proposition 42, a measure that dedicates a portion of the sales tax on gasoline for highway improvements. The governor also proposes $920 million to repay a loan taken from the same fund.
- State universities: Funds the University of California and California State University systems without proposed fee increases that would have cost students a combined $130 million next year.
LOSERS
- Welfare Recipients: Delays a cost-of-living increase in payments to 1.2 million blind, elderly and disabled residents, saving $233 million over the next two years.
- Childcare: Cuts $199 million from childcare programs aimed at helping welfare recipients returning to the work force.
- Education: Even with the additional money schools will receive, educators say they are owed $4 billion more under a budget agreement they made with Schwarzenegger in 2003. They also are concerned they could lose another $500 million because of the way the administration is proposing to account for the Proposition 49 after-school programs.
LOL. I can't quite figure out the format of the various documents on the website. I wish they had an overall outline. Have fun researching! Please report back! :-)
On a related subject, can you help decipher this one? What "deficit" is he measuring at $4.7 billion?
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=politics&id=3799744
He said the state took in $7 billion dollars more in revenue than expected, enabling him to avoid significant cuts.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, (R) California: "We are protecting local government. We are protecting education and health care for our children. And we do not raise taxes."
The Governor could have used the extra $7 billion dollars to wipe out nearly all of the deficit.
But in this election year, he's putting the windfall towards things like paying back some money he borrowed from schools, paying down the state's bond debt, and making sure gas tax money will be spent on roads instead of balancing the budget.
The $16 billion dollar budget deficit the state faced when Schwarzenegger took office is now much lower.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: "It goes down, down, down. We're down to $4.7 billion dollars."
Are you feeling lonely without the spin machine?
I was kind of enjoying the peace. :-)
"2006-2007 Proposed Budget.pdf" available here
Proposed Budget Summary
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/BSS/BSS.html
Proposed Budget Detail
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html
California State Budget
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/home.htm
From the budget proposal:
Under the 2006‑07 GovernorÂs Budget proposal, the estimated operating deficit in 2006‑07 is approximately $6.4 billion  marking $10 billion of progress in just over two years. After adjusting for prepayments or repayments of prior obligations, the 2006‑07 operating deficit is approximately $4.7 billion or nearly $12 billion of improvement.
Thanks. I was working off of a mirrored site - they seem to be the same.
http://govbud.dof.ca.gov/
I found quite a few pdf files, but not the specific file Amerigomag refers to ("2006-2007 Proposed Budget.pdf" ). For example, I found these available in PDF:
FullBudgetSummary.pdf
RevenueEstimates.pdf
DemographicInformation.pdf
And, the schedules offered at this webpage:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/BudgetSummary/SCD/1249579.html
What am I missing?
Nothing.
As long as we all work off the same doc it doesn't matter. I prefer the official version at the California Department of Finance website which is approximately 2.8 MB.
Okay. I got it then (I hope). FullBudgetSummary.pdf is 2853KB (even though the website said it shoud be 2141KB)
In that document, I also found Genest's description of the deficit:To access the entire Budget Summary document in a printable format (pdf), click here: Budget Summary - All Chapters (pdf * - 2141K) ftp://ftpgovbud.dof.ca.gov/pub/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
When you took office you inherited over $22 billion in accumulated debt and an estimated structural budget deficit of $14 billion in 2004-05, which was anticipated to grow to $16.5 billion by 2006-07 unless steps were taken to reduce it.... The budget does not entirely solve the states structural budget problem, but we have taken major steps toward completing that goal. With this budget, the operating deficit is reduced to $6.3 billion. Since the budget includes $1.6 billion for repayment of debt, including $460 million to pre-pay the Economic Recovery Bonds, the effective operating debt is $4.7 billion, which is 72 percent less than it was projected to be for 2006-07 when you took office. While there is still work to be done to put the state on solid financial footing, we are much closer today than we were only two years ago. The work-out plan is working.
As long as wer're at it, let's agree on a convention to save confusion. Will it be the page number in the table of contents or the page number at the bottom of the Adobe Reader presentaion?
LOL. I prefer PDF page numbers, but I can deal with either.
General Fund Special Funds Selected Bond Funds* Budget Total 2003-04 Total Budget And Bond Programs As Changed 71,136,964 20,537,903 7,468,538 99,143,405 2004-05 Total Budget And Bond Programs As Changed 78,681,001 23,701,076 2,995,257 105,377,334 2005-06 Total Budget And Bond Programs As Changed 90,025,960 23,332,837 4,003,719 117,362,516 2006-07 Budget Proposal - January 2006 97,901,837 25,023,542 2,677,952 125,603,331 Change: 2003-04 to 2006-07 26,764,873 4,485,639 -4,790,586 26,459,926 Percent Change 37.6% 21.8% -64.1% 26.7% * Selected bond funds are general obligation bond funds which have traditionally been shown in overall expenditure totals displayed in the governor’s budget.
The specific funds are listed in the ’description of fund classification in the state treasury’ included in the appendix of the governor’s budget.
Sources:
Enacted Budgets (per Final Change Book)
http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/osp/GovernorsBudget/pdf/2003-04fbudsum.pdf
http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/osp/GovernorsBudget04/pdf/fchgbook_04.pdf
http://www.documents.dgs.ca.gov/osp/GovernorsBudget05/pdf/fchgbook_05.pdfProposed Budget
ftp://ftpgovbud.dof.ca.gov/pub/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
This might give some indication. (source)
Senator Tom McClintock
Date: January 10, 2006
Publication Type: Press Release
Senator Tom McClintock today issued the following statement concerning the Governors budget proposal for 2006-2007:Today the Governor released his budget proposal for the 2006-2007 fiscal year.
It projects general fund spending of $97.9 billion with income of $91.5 billion, for a general fund operating deficit of $6.4 billion. This brings the accumulated three year operating deficit to $9.8 billion.
This deficit is funded entirely with borrowed funds from Proposition 57, approved by voters in 2004. Although the public was promised that this bond would only be used to pay for past deficits, it is in fact being used to cover deficits for 2004 ($0.6 billion), 2005 ($2.9 billion) and now 2006 ($6.4 billion).
In November, the Legislative Analyst projected that if nothing were done to rein in spending, the 2006 budget would consume $95.1 billion. The governor proposes spending $2.8 billion above this figure.
In the last three years, combined population and inflation will have grown 16 percent; revenues 19 percent; spending 25 percent. For the budget year, combined population and inflation will increase 4 percent; revenues 5 percent; spending 9 percent. Revenues continue to outpace inflation and population; spending continues to outpace revenues.
I have always applied two fundamental tests to a budget: it must be balanced within existing revenues and it must contain a prudent reserve. The proposal as submitted to the legislature fails both tests.
Governor McClintock.
I wish.
This guy has turned out to be every bit as bad as Gray Davis, and actually may eventually morph into something far worse.
Where is the Recall Petition?
I believe that transformation has already occurred.
He's now challenging the Bustamante threshold.
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