GOv. Jerry Brown isn’t usually prone to bouts of rhetorical flourish, but the state budget catchphrase that he rolled out six years ago stuck — a reminder of something big that was standing between California and fiscal stability.
He called that “a wall of debt,” one built by bad budget choices and economic downturns.
“This is not the time to delay or evade,” Brown said during a Sacramento news conference in May 2011. “This is the time to put our finances in order.”
Six years later, the state is no longer projecting massive deficits and the governor’s metaphorical wall is now more like a short fence. Tax increases approved by voters in 2012 and in 2016 have played a major role in making that happen.
There’s broad agreement that a smaller “wall of debt” is good news. The problem, though, is that Brown’s original definition left out billions of dollars in obligations that someone will have to pay. And it’s unclear who that will be or when it will happen.
Let’s back up, though, and examine the individual bricks in the governor’s wall. When he took office, Brown’s budget team identified 10 short-term government debts as a threat to California’s chances of recovery — debts that totaled $34.7 billion. More than a third of that was money owed to public schools, the result of cuts made during recession years. The bleak times also created debts owed to local governments and to transportation projects. Then there was a $7-billion debt from deficit bonds that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convinced voters to approve in 2004.
(Those deficit bonds, paid off in 2015, ended up costing the state $1 million a day — every day — for 11 straight years.)
View Article