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<H1 id=articleTitle class=articleTitle>Brown promises austere budget at forum
focused on education</H1><!--subtitle--><!--byline-->
<DIV id=articleByline class=articleByline>By Steven Harmon<BR>Contra Costa
Times</DIV><!--date-->
<DIV id=articleDate class=articleDate>Posted: 12/14/2010 04:11:38 PM
PST</DIV><!--secondary date-->
<DIV id=articleDate class=articleSecondaryDate>Updated: 12/14/2010 05:29:33
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<P class=bodytext>SACRAMENTO -- Gov.-elect Jerry Brown had some words of advice
for those gearing up for the budget he will propose next month: "Please sit down
if you're reading the stories on the budget on Jan. 10. If you're driving,
fasten your seat belt because it's going to be a rough ride."</P>
<P>That much has been evident from the hard truths Brown continued to unleash
Tuesday at UCLA during a forum focusing on where education fits in the state's
overall revenue picture. It was his second budget forum in seven days, and Brown
made it clear that few people will emerge unscathed as the Legislature seeks a
way out of a potential $28.1 billion hole.</P>
<P>After being cheered at the start of the forum, Brown said, "I don't know if
you'll be cheering after the budget comes out."</P>
<P>But Brown also telegraphed what some took to be hints that he is laying the
groundwork to take a tax hike initiative to voters in the spring.</P>
<P>"I think the signals are clear that he'll push through an austerity budget
with an all-cuts budget early in the year, and he'll say if you don't like it,
here are the revenues we need," said Robert Cruickshank, editor of the liberal
<A title="http://calitics.com/
CTRL + Click to follow link"
href="http://calitics.com/">Calitics.com</A> blog.</P>
<P>Brown said he wanted to complete the budget in 60 days, saying, "I don't
think we have a lot of time to waste" -- a hint suggesting that he would like to
allow the bad news of harsh cuts time enough to sink into voters' minds before a
spring special election.</P>
<P>"Where I see openings that will pave the way for positive initiative, then
I'm going to lead the charge," Brown said. "But I'd want to do it very carefully
and very thoughtfully because I want to make sure we succeed." </P>
<P></P>
<P>Brown even drifted into soliloquies that warmed the hearts of liberals,
referring to California's deficit as a fraction of the state's overall wealth
and talking about the harmful effects of the "redistribution" of income to the
wealthy.</P>
<P>"Income redistribution that's occurred upward from the middle class and below
is now at a level comparable to pre-Depression 1920s," he said. "So what we are
facing is not only a budget deficit. We're facing a societal crisis, and we will
only resolve it as we understand it and we work not only to exercise a
discipline, which has been sadly lacking, but also a fairness that enables
everybody to feel they have an honest stake in the whole society. That's the
larger picture here."</P>
<P>He called the current era, with widening gaps between the wealthy and middle
class, "a very difficult period. We've never had it before. It may be worse than
the Depression in terms of political pressures, the tearing of the social
fabric."</P>
<P>Those who are the most privileged, he said, "really have to take the lead" in
resolving the fiscal crisis. He said that group includes government agencies,
which can do "a lot more with less."</P>
<P>Education officials urged Brown to seek tax increases to lift a downcast
education system that has taken $17 billion in general fund cuts over the past
two years.</P>
<P>"Temporary taxes need to be extended," said Joel Shapiro, superintendent for
South Pasadena schools. "Absolutely, we can't do without revenues. We need to
educate the voters of California "... that the only way to keep the education
system from deteriorating worse is to increase revenues, taxes or fees."</P>
<P>But Brown appeared slightly miffed at the tone Shapiro took toward
voters.</P>
<P>"You say we've got to educate them -- in some ways, they've got to educate
us," Brown said. "It's not really a we/them. It's society. There's a lot of
hostility to government. They look at the city of Bell, they pick up the paper
and see firefighters getting a $250,000 pension. There's a lot of skepticism
about government in the political process. That's a reality and we have to take
the world as we find it and we have to work through it."</P>
<P>James Johnson, a Long Beach councilman, asked Brown how he intends to figure
out the contradiction voters have between their desire to fully fund schools and
their hostility to taxes.</P>
<P>Brown answered, partly in jest: "That's why we're here -- we're hoping one of
you people will come up with it. We didn't gather here just to hear ourselves
speak."</P>
<P>One dilemma, he said, was that the state tries to make sense out of competing
outlooks from regions that have little in common -- an argument, he said, for
shifting many of the state's responsibilities to local governments.</P>
<P>"When we take so many local decisions and put them all at the state Capitol,
then we have all these different perceptions working on the problem," he said.
"That's why we get a lot of breakdown and gridlock. Because people see the world
differently."</P>
<P>One indication of how he'd like to "offload costs" from state to local: There
are 45,000 inmates who are incarcerated for 90 days or fewer in state prisons
who he said could be housed in county institutions at a lower cost.</P>
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