Editor
Democrats are always challenging Republicans for their budget plan, even though in California a Republican budget has no chance of ever being considered, let alone being passed. If I were asked to fill in this blank, I would say the plan is to don’t spend money you don’t have. When California was relatively in good shape financially, as recently as 2005, the legislature found many ways to spend the “excess” when in reality there was none. The Democrats just studiously avoided noticing that they had created an overgrown, expensive bureaucracy that generated an enormous and rapidly growing unfunded public employee pension liability. While overlooking this liability, Democrats “balanced” the budget with gimmickry such as taking on long-term debt to cover current operating costs.
California cities and counties did the same. Oakland, for example, used redevelopment fund revenue to pay for their bloated city payroll. For Oakland, a city job was just another form of welfare. It’s ironic that this practice, which apparently was undertaken while Jerry Brown was Oakland’s mayor, will make Oakland fire several hundred city employees now that Governor Brown has killed redevelopment agencies.
California Democrats continue living in a fool’s paradise, where pretending to not notice that soon the costs of the unfunded pension liabilities will not only eat up everything they thought they could “invest” in tax-payer subsidized luxuries such as high-speed rail (from Fresno to Bakersfield), but also engulf education, law enforcement, and all the bread-and-butter governmental responsibilities.
The lucky Californians will be the ones who can move to the better managed states, such as Texas. They will feel right at home there, since many of their neighbors will be retired California legislators and public employees who will be living there to escape the ruinous high taxes and rapidly deteriorating services of California.
Mike Combs
Gualala
