SACRAMENTO -- Early contributions to Gov. Jerry Brown's tax-hike initiative show a wide span of interests are beginning to line up behind it.

In the past two weeks, two business groups -- the Occidental Petroleum Corporation and the American Beverage Association -- pitched in $250,000 apiece to his ballot committee, Californians to Protect Schools, Universities and Public Safety.

The governor has raised $1.7 million as his campaign begins to collect signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot, according to campaign finance reports released Tuesday. No committee has yet been formed to oppose the tax measure.

Gaining the support of business alongside Democrats' traditional labor allies appears to be a key to the governor's strategy, analysts say. The measure would raise about $7 billion by increasing the sales tax by a half-cent and income tax on individuals who make $250,000 or more a year.

Read the entire article here.

SACRAMENTO -- The two sides of Gov. Jerry Brown's political persona have come into clear view this month. Two weeks ago, it was the austere and pragmatic Brown, as he released his slash-away state budget.

But on Wednesday, during his State of the State address in the Assembly chamber, he gave a glimpse of his idealistic, visionary side, providing a full-throated defense of California's high-speed rail plan despite the pummeling it's taken in recent months.

Brown took on critics in his most forceful language to date, noting that naysayers have been wrong about some of the great infrastructure projects of the past.

"The Central Valley Water Project was called a 'fantastic dream' that 'will not work,' " he said. "The master plan for the interstate highway system in 1939 was derided as 'New Deal jitterbug economics.' In 1966, then-Mayor (Wallace) Johnson of Berkeley called BART a 'billion-dollar potential fiasco.'

"Similarly, the Panama Canal was for years thought to be impractical, and Benjamin Disraeli himself said of the Suez Canal: 'Totally impossible to be carried out.' The critics were wrong then, and they're wrong now.''

Brown, in his second State of the State address since returning as governor after a 28-year hiatus, also urged the Legislature to tackle other momentous changes such as pension reform and a new water-infrastructure project. And he made his case for new taxes while insisting that additional budget cuts are necessary.

A blend of the tough, the unpopular and the lofty are what's needed to build "confidence in California as a place to invest and realize one's dreams," he said.

Read the entire article here

While Jerry Brown's 2012-2013 budget proposal has grabbed the headlines, another series of proposals has the potential for moving the state in a more efficient direction.

The governor has issued a twelve-page document that advocates reducing the number of state agencies to 10 from the present 12 and eliminating 39 departments, commissions or programs. Some would be folded into existing arrangements, while others would be abolished altogether.

These changes could go a long way toward making California less susceptible to bureaucratic overlap and less vulnerable to the various private interests that seek to penetrate these institutions for their own gains.

Some of Brown's recommendations are substantive, such as merging Caltrans, the DMV, the High-Speed Rail Authority, the CHP, the California Transportation Commission, and the Board of Pilot Commissioners into the Transportation Agency.

Others include the elimination of a handful of the 300 boards and commissions as well as transferring stand alone departments into existing agencies.

Unlike efforts by former governors to trim the edges of California's bureaucratic duplication, the Brown proposal seems thoughtful and purposive.

Read entire story at NBC Bay Area

12-point proposal raises retirement age for public employees, ends system-wide abuses and cuts costs for taxpayers by billions

SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today proposed 12 major reforms for state and local pension systems that would end system-wide abuses and reduce taxpayer costs by billions of dollars over the long term.

“It’s time to fix our pension systems so that they are fair and sustainable over a long time horizon,” said Governor Brown. “My plan raises the retirement age and bans abusive practices like ‘spiking’ and ‘air time’ while mandating that public employees pay an equal share of pension costs.”

The Governor’s 12-point plan addresses key issues affecting pensions in state and local governments. He initially outlined a pension reform plan during budget negotiations in March 2011.

When fully implemented, these reforms will cut roughly in half the cost to taxpayers for providing pension benefits for state employees. It will cut the risk to taxpayers for pension debt by more than half. Similar savings are expected across all systems.

“I look forward to working with the legislature to enact these major reforms,” said Governor Brown.

The Governor's Plan can be found here (PDF).

Sacramento -- - A strong majority of Californians support Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to raise the sales tax and income taxes on high earners to help close the state's budget deficit, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California poll.

The poll - an early measurement of a proposal that has far to go until voters can weigh in in November - found that 65 percent of all adults surveyed support his plan, which would increase the sales tax by a half cent and raise taxes on high-income earners, starting with individuals who make more than $250,000 per year.

The poll also found deep concern among state voters about further cuts to K-12 public education and that Californians see their local government services as significantly impacted by multiple years of state budget cuts as lawmakers and the governor have struggled to balance the budget.

These findings come as the Brown administration will announce today what automatic midyear budget cuts will be implemented.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/12/BASB1MBGSM.D...

A PDF of the letter can be found here.  A link to the inititive can be found here.

When I became Governor again -- 28 years after my last term ended in 1983 -- California was facing a $26.6 billion budget deficit. It was the result of years of failing to match spending with tax revenues as budget gimmicks instead of honest budgeting became the norm. 

In January, I proposed a budget that combined deep cuts with a temporary extension of some existing taxes. It was a balanced approach that would have finally closed our budget gap. 

I asked the legislature to enact this plan and to allow you, the people of California, to vote on it.  I believed that you had the right to weigh in on this important choice: should we decently fund our schools or lower our taxes?  I don’t know how you would have voted, but we will never know.  The Republicans refused to provide the four votes needed to put this measure on the ballot.

Forced to act alone, Democrats went ahead and enacted massive cuts and the first honest on-time budget in a decade. But without the tax extensions, it was simply not possible to eliminate the state’s structural deficit. 

The good news is that our financial condition is much better than a year ago. We cut the ongoing budget deficit by more than half, reduced the state’s workforce by about 5500 positions and cut unnecessary expenses like cell phones and state cars. We actually cut state expenses by over $10 billion.  Spending is now at levels not seen since the seventies.  Our state’s credit rating has moved from “negative” to “stable,” laying the foundation for job creation and a stronger economic recovery.

Unfortunately, the deep cuts we made came at a huge cost. Schools have been hurt and state funding for our universities has been reduced by 25%.  Support for the elderly and the disabled has fallen to where it was in 1983.  Our courts suffered debilitating reductions.  

The stark truth is that without new tax revenues, we will have no other choice but to make deeper and more damaging cuts to schools, universities, public safety and our courts. 

That is why I am filing today an initiative with the Attorney General’s office that would generate nearly $7 billion in dedicated funding to protect education and public safety. I am going directly to the voters because I don’t want to get bogged down in partisan gridlock as happened this year. The stakes are too high.

My proposal is straightforward and fair.  It proposes a temporary tax increase on the wealthy, a modest and temporary increase in the sales tax, and guarantees that the new revenues be spent only on education.  Here are the details: 

• Millionaires and high-income earners will pay up to 2% higher income taxes for five years. No family making less than $500,000 a year will see their income taxes rise. In fact, fewer than 2% of California taxpayers will be affected by this increase.   
• There will be a temporary ½ cent increase in the sales tax.  Even with this temporary increase, sales taxes will still be lower than what they were less than six months ago.
• This initiative dedicates funding only to education and public safety--not on other programs that we simply cannot afford. 

This initiative will not solve all of our fiscal problems. But it will stop further cuts to education and public safety.   

I ask you to join with me to get our state back on track.  

We're finally seeing some serious talk in Sacramento about what should be the Legislature's No. 1 priority: job creation. Unfortunately -- just like in Washington -- partisan politics are preventing progress.

Gov. Jerry Brown last week unveiled a jobs plan made up of several bills making their way through the Legislature. He wants to close a $1 billion tax loophole that encourages companies to create jobs elsewhere, using the savings for tax changes to foster job creation here. It's exactly the kind of tax reform California needs.

Yet Republicans immediately labeled the plan a tax increase -- since presumably some out-of-state businesses would end up paying more -- even though it doesn't raise a penny for the general fund. (Two GOP votes are needed in each house for this plan.) So now, it seems, even revenue-neutral tax changes are "tax increases." Do Republicans believe current tax law was handed directly to Moses?

Read the entire editorial here - http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_18764771

Today in Los Angeles, Governor-Elect Jerry Brown hosted another in a series of budget updates. Today's forum focused on education.

Here are the slides from today's presentations:

Governor-Elect Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr.

Treasurer Bill Lockyer

State Superintendent-Elect Tom Torlakson

Controller John Chiang

UPDATE - the slides from today's forum are linked below:

Governor-Elect Jerry Brown Budget Brief

Treasurer Bill Lockyer Budget Brief

Controller John Chiang Budget Brief

You can watch the forum on the California Channel here: https://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewvideo/1914

Gov.-elect Jerry Brown hosts a gathering of state lawmakers today to jump-start the discussion on the bad budget situation they will inherit when he takes office early next month.

All 120 state legislators and 1,200 local officials were invited to the 10.m. forum. It is unclear how many have RSVPed, though all four legislative leaders -- Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Senate GOP leader Bob Dutton, Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez and Assembly GOP leader Connie Conway -- will be at the 10 a.m. event at Memorial Hall.

Also sharing the stage will be Ana Matosantos, the now-former Schwarzenegger finance director Brown announced yesterday would stay on board as his top budget adviser, as well as Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor, Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Controller John Chiang.

The meeting is closed to the public, but SacBee.com will have live coverage during the event.

Brown has already met with legislators from both caucuses -- dining with Democrats on Sunday night and addressing Republicans during a breakfast Monday. His outreach has so far been welcomed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

"I feel right now, we're still on the first date, so to speak, but he certainly seems receptive to our thoughts or ideas," Dutton said Monday.

Click here to watch the event online.

Read original story here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/12/am-alert-wednesday-8.html#ixzz17XLRIAdt

Read the Opinion piece at the New York Times

Photo by Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

In choosing the oldest man ever to run the young state of California, voters decided that a grumpy penny-pincher is just what they need at a time when the state is so broke it cannot fix park benches or investigate burglaries.

Jerry Brown - welcome back! The man who eschewed the governor's mansion to sleep on a mattress on his apartment floor when he ran California a long generation ago should feel right at home in the poorhouse of Sacramento 2010. Here's what your outgoing governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had to say while trying to keep the lights on and foreclosure buzzards at bay:

"Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed. Our credit is dried up."

The only thing not in short supply, it seems, is California schadenfreude. The Golden State has become the American France - everyone professes to despise it, but loves to go there.

Consider: even in the last year, when 2.2 million Californians were out of work, the state added more new residents than the entire population of Pittsburgh. And about 335 million visitors came. The message from the seven out of eight Americans who do not live in California is: we love you, and enjoy watching you suffer.

The 72-year-old Brown brings a perfect background to the triage operation he will undertake in the first week of January, when he will begin a long-interrupted third term as governor.

First, he has that missionary zeal for lost causes. Remember, he was studying to be a priest at a Jesuit seminary when his father became governor in 1959 and ushered in the glory years of California as a nation-state. Over the next half-century, young Brown lived a half-dozen lives - Yale Law school, two terms as governor, three runs for president, mayor of Oakland, attorney general - and the state entered a ragged period of self-doubt. During the greed-is-good era of the late 1980s, Brown found himself ministering to the sick and dying at Mother Teresa's hospice in Calcutta.

Second, business-minded outsiders may sound good on paper, but they don't work well as politicians. Schwarzenegger promised to bring his Hollywood deal-maker's muscle to Sacramento. In the end, he was without allies, and he leaves California in tatters. This year, Brown destroyed his opponent, the profligate billionaire and political neophyte Meg Whitman, with an ad that showed her mouthing the same "run the state as a business" homilies as the failed Governator.

"We need someone with insider's knowledge," Brown said, with Zen clarity, "but an outsider's mind."

Also, unlike Schwarzenegger, Brown is not dyeing what little hair he has left or pumping up his pecs to impress the babes. California needs someone to act his age, and Brown has settled into his senior years without illusions.

"Old people have a lot of good ideas," he said on the campaign trail, another bit from the Tao of Moonbeam.

Third, Brown has long been a tightwad. O.K., he does live in a $1.8 million home in Oakland Hills with his wife and confidante, Anne Gust Brown, a former Gap executive. But he's never lost the Costco-buyer's view of the world. During one of his runs for president, he called for a Constitutional amendment forcing a balanced federal budget. He was an angry, mildly kooky Tea Partier before there was an angry, very kooky Tea Party.

"The truth is, I don't like to spend money - not my own, and not the taxpayers'," he said during the campaign. "If you want frugality, I'm your man."

Read the Opinion piece at the New York Times

He reinforced this view during his first press conference after routing Whitman, who spent $141 million of her own money - more than any person in American history has ever spent on a single political race. He noted that the voters were in a sour mood, even turning down a proposal to raise car license fees by $18 to fund state parks.

"My message is get ready for hard surfaces and benches," said the governor-elect. The only real promise Brown made was not to raise taxes without a vote of the people. For a Democrat, that's a meal of porridge and tap water.

What can Brown do with an immediate $25 billion budget hole? What he's always done: the unpredictable. He can, for instance, ask state employee unions to make major concessions in their pensions - part of a system that's risen 2,000 percent in 10 years - medical co-pays and other benefits. These are his allies. They have nowhere else to go. There will be no federal bailout of California. Default would bring down the American bond market.

Brown won't have to deal with the lowest-paid state workers, those represented by the powerful Service Employees International Union, because they already signed a new three-year deal. It's the bigger unions, who've featherbedded their salaries and benefits while average Californians have seen their incomes decline, that he should target. In a bankrupt state, it's crazy for prison guards to be making $100,000 a year with overtime.

Finally, Brown will enter office with minimal expectations. The best thing he said on the campaign trail was that the job of governing California is a career-killer - so voters might as well elect somebody whose career is at an end. Wise words. The youngest, and soon, the oldest governor of California fits the bill.