Voters said no, but keep working on state budget fix

By MICHAEL HALEY

In what was rather anti-climactic the five state propositions devoted to the state budget mess went down tonight. Most voters simply checked out in what looks like it will be the lowest voter turn out for a state election in decades. That alone tells you that something was seriously wrong, and it will be up to the legislature and the media to try to sort out what the message is here.

There are a lot of reasons that voters turned this down, taxes too high, the Governor and legislature not doing their job, and more. But some also turned against it because they didn't want the spending limit in 1A, particularly some of the unions.

But does the message even really matter? The truth is that the state is finally going to have to make serious reform in the way that it does business, and a lot of spending cuts will have to be made.

We simply cannot spend this much money, pay people so well, grant big pensions, spend twice as much as many states per prisoner in the prison system, etc, etc, and have all the regulatory bodies and boards full of employees that we do and continue to function economically.

Can't do it.

We can't cut everything out of education and human services while we have so many high paid employees in all the other departments and divisions of government, like safety, like prisons, like overlapping environmental boards, like engineering. We have to start to look at that.

Local governments are going to feel the sting of this promptly, and our local governments have to turn immediately to ways to cut back. They also have to make more consideration of increasing revenues.

It is better to cut the salaries of people rather than lay more off. Right now public employee union rules require that senior people (i.e. high paid) get cut last. The unions also demand that rather than cut salaries, the people at the bottom get laid off. That has got to change.

Far better to give the local home health aides their extra $2.00 an hour while cutting the wages of those making $50 an hour, in fact cut them 10 bucks an hour and save 8 while we are at it.

The State Legislature and the Governor need to come forward with real spending cuts like they should have a year ago. They know who the well heeled are and where all the money is going. State spending has been growing far faster than inflation since Schwarzeneggar was elected, and the CHP has continued hiring throughout this whole budget debacle. Couldn't they at least have frozen hiring? Not when you can lay off teachers, I suppose.

Throughout this major recession it is going to be very important to keep as many people working as possible, even at lower salaries. People who are working pay taxes, people who are working are the driving force through their spending that will return the economy to growth and end the recession.

Whether intentional or not, the voters have sent a big message that spending is to be cut. And a lot of spending is to be cut. Time to start looking at the fairest and economically least damaging way to do that.

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