{"id":273807,"date":"2024-05-25T22:05:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-26T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesofsandiego.com\/?p=273807"},"modified":"2024-05-26T07:39:49","modified_gmt":"2024-05-26T14:39:49","slug":"californias-broken-constitution-and-powerful-lobbies-make-a-balanced-budget-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesofsandiego.com\/opinion\/2024\/05\/25\/californias-broken-constitution-and-powerful-lobbies-make-a-balanced-budget-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: California’s Broken Constitution and Powerful Lobbies Make a Balanced Budget Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Gov.<\/a>
Gov. Gavin Newsom presents his budget plan in Sacramento. Courtesy of the governor’s office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You can tune out Gov. Newsom when he talks about the state\u2019s big budget deficit<\/a>. Ignore the Democrats<\/a> who control the legislature, too. And turn the volume down when lobbies complain<\/a> about proposed cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

California\u2019s ballooning budget deficits are not a crisis. They are normal and predictable. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Opinion<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Because they are grounded in our state constitution<\/a>, and in a reality so paradoxical it would make Kafka blush:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our constitution requires the state to balance its budget. But balancing the state budget requires violating the state constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\u2019s that? Because on fiscal matters, our constitution is a ratchet. The document is full of guarantees and formulas that ratchet up spending on favored programs \u2014 and limits on taxes and fees that ratchet down revenues in slower economic times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Californians may have forgotten about the ratchet. The past decade was an unusual one for the state budget<\/a>, as stock market growth and federal pandemic relief created budget surpluses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But with those revenue sources gone or declining, California\u2019s constitution is reasserting itself, and producing deficits projected recently to range anywhere from $27 billion to $70 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That leaves Gov. Newsom stuck, and forced to do what all California governors must: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Violate the constitution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, he\u2019s not offering a balanced budget. The spending delays, draw-downs on reserves, and cuts he\u2019s proposing eliminate only about half of the deficit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, he\u2019s violating the state\u2019s education funding guarantee, a voter-approved formula called Prop. 98.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prop. 98 is, famously<\/a>, so complicated that no one really understands it. (It involves three complex formulas to determine state funding, and it\u2019s never clear really clear which formula will apply in which year.) The main effect of Prop. 98 is to keep pushing education spending up; it\u2019s one of the biggest spending ratchets in our constitutional budget ratchet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newsom\u2019s maneuver is a sneaky ploy to reduce Prop. 98\u2019s ratchet effect by changing the inputs to the formula. Newsom\u2019s budget proposes to travel back in time and reclassify certain moneys spent on education in previous years as non-education spending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This maneuver is intended to lower the funding base, which would make the budget look less out of balance. The problem is that the lower funding base would mean tens of billions less in school funding in future years<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, my fellow Californians, \u201cscrew the kids\u201d<\/a> remains the real, if unofficial, state motto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The powerful education lobby is crying foul, as are some Democrats and local governments. Newsom defends himself by saying he\u2019s required to balance the budget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with this blame game \u2014 and demands that Newsom reverse the cuts \u2014 is that it defines the discussion as being about the budget. The real problem is California\u2019s broken constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding tens of billions of dollars in cuts for anything is hard. Health programs have all kinds of court-ordered, statutory, and, in some cases, constitutional protections. Cuts to prisons and state agencies require concessions from politically powerful labor unions. Tax increases run up against Prop. 13 and other state revenue limits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m trying to let Newsom, the Democratic supermajority in the legislature, and other powerful Sacramento interests off the hook for the state\u2019s budget problems. It\u2019s the exact opposite. The governor, Democrats, and interest groups are responsible for the budget mess \u2014 because they\u2019ve had plenty of time to fix the constitution, and haven’t even tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin Newsom has been in statewide office since 2011. California Democrats have had full control of Sacramento since that same year. And powerful unions and other lobbies have held sway for far longer than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these politicians and lobbies know very well that the California constitution is broken. They have long had the power to come together and give the state the new constitution it needs \u2014 without all the fiscal ratchets that drive up spending and limit revenues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they haven\u2019t been willing to lead and change the system. They have focused instead on building their own power within this broken system. Jerry Brown and other California leaders have spent the past decades dismissing calls for a constitutional rewrite (including my own, via the book California Crackup<\/a><\/em>) as unrealistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But state leaders are the ones who have lost touch with reality. They claim they can fix the budget, but they can\u2019t because the constitution won\u2019t let them.  And they won\u2019t fix the constitution because they say it\u2019s politically impossible. How long can they keep saying this \u2014 and keep pretending they are doing their jobs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the governor and legislators say they are trying to solve the problem, they aren\u2019t telling the truth. This miserable budget, full of cuts to education, is a product of the budget system, and the constitution, that they themselves have chosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Z\u00f3calo Public Square<\/a>,  an Arizona State University media enterprise.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicians and lobbies know very well that the California constitution is broken. They have long had the power to give the state the new constitution it needs \u2014 without all the fiscal ratchets that drive up spending and limit revenues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"News","MSN_Publish_Option":true,"MSN_Is_Local_News":true,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[{\"longitude\":\"-117.164\",\"latitude\":\"32.7158\",\"locality\":\"San Diego\",\"subRegion\":\"San Diego County\",\"region\":\"CA\",\"country\":\"United States\"}]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":"","newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-05-25T19:02:51Z","apple_news_api_id":"32458abb-6e71-46ce-989e-c31c8d26b01d","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-05-26T14:39:47Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AMkWKu25xRs6YnsMcjSawHQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[295936,33682,291359,11054,3922,295935,293905],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[293573],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"Opinion: California's Broken Constitution and Powerful Lobbies Make a Balanced Budget Impossible - Times of San Diego<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Politicians and lobbies know very well that the California constitution is broken. 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