When Jerry Brown ran for governor last year, I voted for him. One reason I did so was because I believed that he would be likely to keep everything above-board, budget-wise.
He has delivered in spades.
After recently vetoing a budget bill sent to him by his own party (which dominates both houses of the Legislature), he has now succeeded in negotiating a new budget bill that is very close to balanced. And it has passed. Here’s what the Silicon Valley Mercury News reported today:
Using the power of a majority vote that the electorate handed them last fall, Democrats on Tuesday muscled through the final touches to an $86 billion budget that ended six months of haggling . . .
[California’s] Treasurer Bill Lockyer . . . called it [the new budget] “financeable” in a letter to Brown, Steinberg and Perez.
The deal eliminates “significant litigation risk,” Lockyer said, and the backup plan to trigger as much as $2.5 billion in further cuts if revenues do not materialize “provides sufficient assurance” the state will have enough cash on hand.
For the first time in years, Lockyer said, the Legislature “honestly and clearly balances revenues and spending” and makes “substantial progress toward eliminating California’s large and chronic structural deficit.”
And the governor and Legislature arrived at the birth of this baby without a tax increase.
Informative, isn’t it?
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