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Davis, after refusing for months to even acknowledge that the state was facing a fiscal crisis, declared in December that California was looking at a $34.6 billion gap between revenues and expenses in the coming year. That number, which amounts to almost half of the state's annual general fund spending, was immediately suspect, because it was far higher than anyone imagined it would be and because it was arrived at with accounting techniques that would make Arthur Andersen blush.
Second, Hill said Wednesday that Davis had puffed up his projections of future spending and then taken credit for cutting that spending, to the tune of about $5.5 billion, apparently to increase pressure on the Legislature to accept his proposals.
What Davis is doing is taking a time-honored and credible practice -- projecting the amount of money it would take to keep programs going at their current levels, given inflation and population growth -- and pushing it to the extreme, or really beyond it.
Davis has done a disservice to the state and to the Legislature by cooking the books in pursuit of political advantage. It's difficult enough for the public to understand state finances without the chief executive playing these kinds of games.
Gosh, I think that Davis is about as accurate in his budget math as he was in his math for determining $8+ billion in overcharges during the power crisis. The guy has no credibility and now folks are beginning to point it out.