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Budget Alert June 17, 2011 |
….State Budget:
Now you see it, now you don’t!
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Well, we had a state budget for almost 12 hours this week!
Both the Senate and Assembly passed a package of budget bills for the 2011-12 fiscal year on a majority vote on Wednesday, June 15. The budget that was sent to the Governor did not include the extension of the temporary taxes that would prevent deeper cuts or deferrals to education funding.
Instead, the adopted budget attempted to bridge the state deficit with cuts already taken, a deferral of $2.1 billion in funding to K-12 schools as well as a variety of fee increases, borrowing and sales of state assets.
Early on Thursday morning, Governor Brown vetoed this budget. His reasoning is partially explained in the following excerpt:
| “Unfortunately, the budget I have received is not abalanced solution. It continues big deficits for years to come and adds billions of dollars of new debt. It also contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings. Finally, it is not financeable and therefore will not allow us to meet our obligations as they occur.†|  |
You can see his veto message in a video clip here, or you can read his full veto message athttp://www.gov.ca.gov.
California State PTA will be working with the Governor, members of the Legislature as well as our partners in the Education Coalition in the next two weeks to stress the importance of supporting a realistic, balanced approach by June 30.
School districts must submit their 2011-12 balanced budgets by that date. Unless they have confidence in the level of funding that they will receive for the coming school year from the state, many will budget on a worst case scenario and will likely face additional cuts. These cuts hurt kids – with larger class sizes, shorter school years, reduced levels of academic support and more.
We continue to stress that the revenue generated from the temporary taxes is critical to maintaining the most basic level of education programs and services our children need. We will be evaluating the various budget proposals and options being discussed and will send additional information as it becomes available.
Now is not the time to let up the pressure – we’ll send out additional suggested actions you can take early next week. Stay tuned!
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