Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday that he opposes two education initiatives – as currently written – planned for the November election ballot, a $9 billion school construction bond and a proposal to extend Proposition 30’s tax on wealthy taxpayers.
Brown made the comments at a press conference in which he presented a state budget proposal that includes a 5.6 percent increase in ongoing K-12 per-student spending for 2016-17. A summary of the budget can be found here.
Brown called the proposal for a 12-year extension of Proposition 30, a temporary tax that expires in two years “fatally flawed” because it would prohibit diverting any of the money into the state’s rainy day fund for general state spending. Building up that reserve to cushion the impact of the next economic recession is one of Brown’s priorities, and Brown spent much of the press conference warning of the likelihood of another downturn. “If you don’t remember anything else, just remember, everything that goes up comes down,” Brown said. His proposed $122.6 billion general fund budget would add $2 billion to the rainy day fund, bringing the total to $8 billion.
View Article