The Governor gave about a fifteen minute address to the legislature today. Nothing unexpected. You can watch it here (for now), or read it below (or here). Courtesy of the Sacramento Bee you can see a spreadsheet detailing all of the Governor’s proposed cuts (and borrowing) here.
The Governor’s Speech (As Prepared):
Earlier this year, we began consolidating all of our IT departments.
My proposal to consolidate all of our energy functions is in legislation before you right now.
So is a proposal to consolidate the departments that oversee financial institutions.
And I will soon send you legislation to merge our tax collection operations.
These are all actions that we can take on our own to save money and make government more efficient.
We don’t have to bother the people.
We don’t need permission from the federal government.
I know that Senator Steinberg is talking about reforming and restructuring relationships between state and local government.
Senator Hollingsworth and the Republicans have some great ideas about performance-based budgeting.
In July, we should receive the bipartisan recommendations from our Tax Modernization Commission.
This will be a tremendous opportunity to make our revenues more reliable and less volatile and help the state avoid the boom and bust budgets that have brought us here today.
Let’s all work together to make it happen.
Now I don’t expect every single one of these reforms to happen within the next 14 days.
But we can certainly get them done before this body adjourns for Summer Recess on July 17th.
Now there are other big reforms that I continue to believe strongly in like a spending cap and rainy day fund in order to further stabilize our revenues.
But I’m not going to talk about that today because those reforms require voter approval.
And as we learned a few weeks ago, the voters will never trust us on those issues until we show that we can do our jobs in this Capitol and make the tough decisions.
There is no doubt that the challenges before us are enormous.
They will test our will, our resolve and our leadership.
Many of the things I am proposing are despised by the special interests that rely on the status quo. And we are all familiar with the interest groups and their army of lobbyists.
But let’s not forget, it is our job to lobby on behalf of the people and the great state of California.
In the coming days and weeks, the entire nation will be watching how we react and respond.
Last week, Paul Krugman from the New York Times wrote that California is in a state of paralysis…and that our political system has failed to rise to the occasion.
People are writing California off.
They are talking about the end of the California Dream.
They don’t believe that we in this room have the courage and determination to do what needs to be done or that the state is manageable.
Let’s prove all the pundits wrong.
Let’s use this crisis as an opportunity to make big and lasting change.
Let’s not think just in the short-term. Let’s think about the long-term, let’s think big and lay a new foundation for California’s future.
Let’s meet these challenges head-on without gimmicks.
I don’t want to hand these problems to the next governor and I know you don’t want to hand them to the next Legislature.
I have faith in all of you.
I have faith in our ability to once again come together for the good of our state.
Let’s move forward and put California back on the path to prosperity.
Thank you very much.