CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : The Budget-Busters Regroup : Wielding the power of Proposition 98, the schools won their share--a lesson not lost on the losers.
The battle for the 1991 California budget is over, and the only contender left standing in the middle of the ring is education. It’s not unscathed--there’s a bit of blood dripping from its nose--but it’s standing, and none of the other interests that sought shares of the state budget can say that.
Of course, it wasn’t a fair fight. Unlike the other combatants, education went into the ring with a shield. In a bare-knuckle fight, the one who gets to bring a shield usually wins.
Education’s shield was Proposition 98, an initiative that was barely passed by the electorate in 1988, which guaranteed primary, secondary and community college education 40%-plus of the state general fund budget. With that protection, education added $1.8 billion to its $17.8-billion budget, an increase of 10%. The state budget as a whole increased a smaller 7.6%.
Just about every other agency in the state budget was a loser.
The losers may be down, but they’re not unconscious. They know why they lost and education won. They know about the shield--and they each want one of their own.
Among the losers is health-care funding. Health care makes up less than 15% of the state budget, down about 4% or 5% from a decade ago.
The health-care industry may put up a number of initiatives to protect spending on doctors, hospitals and nursing homes. If health took about 20% of the state budget a few years ago, it will want to secure 25% now--just to be on the safe side. There are more Californians now, so it figures there are more sick ones in need of care. Taking a page from education’s notebook, health’s protected share of the budget probably will have an escalator clause to take an even greater share in each passing year.
Welfare will want to protect its share of the budget, and if health care can take 25% of the general funds, then so can welfare.
Prisons have been doing quite well under the Deukmejian administration, but the governor is ready to hang up his keys. With the Iron Duke no longer available to look out for prison interests, they’ll need protection of their own. Ten percent doesn’t seem too much to ask as a guaranteed share of the budget. We’re talking about public safety.
Local government has been knocked around in the budget battle so many times before, it came to this fight a little punchy. The wobbly legs are from years of trekking to Sacramento to beg for a share of the budget to fund programs imposed by the state to be administered and paid for by the locals. A guarantee seems just the tonic to put some spring back in local government’s step. Fifteen percent seems fair. Twenty percent seems more fair.
And so it will go. Each dependency of the state will place an initiative on the ballot to secure protection for itself. When all have armor, there won’t be a need for budget battles.
Of course, after each agency wins by initiative what it feels is its fair share, the guarantees will add up to 175% of the funds available. Isn’t it impossible to spend 75% more than what you can pay for? Not at all. With the cost-of-living escalators currently built into the system outstripping available revenue, that’s what we regularly get now--a budget bigger than we can afford.
There will be one place where we can cut and save money: the Legislature itself. If all these initiatives pass and all the money in the budget is automatically designated, we can go back to having a part-time Legislature. A one-hour session sounds about right.
