From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

Jerry Brown’s Tough Odds

Jerry Brown, who will once again serve as California governor next month after a 28-year absence, is sending signals on how he plans to deal with the state’s budget crisis. As expected, higher taxes are in the cards.

Step One is the usual post-election revelation of the true extent of the problem, which is always downplayed before the vote. "What we’re looking at today is much worse than it’s ever been before," he told an audience of local officials recently. His best estimate of the state’s deficit over the next 18 months is $28 billion, which is larger than annual state spending on prisons, welfare and all state universities combined.

Step Two involves stating the need for bold and decisive action. Mr. Brown has told GOP state legislators that he wants to "rip the Band-Aid off next year."

Step Three will mean crafting a mix of tax increases and changes in the state’s budget process. Because Mr. Brown promised voters during his campaign that he wouldn’t raise taxes without their approval, leaders of both parties expect him to call a special election next June to ask voters to either swallow tough tax medicine or face drastic cuts in services.

State Senator Mark Leno, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee, told reporters that a special election would present a doomsday list of budget cuts that would have to be made if voters didn’t go along. "Voters need to understand what damage would be done if it were resolved with cuts alone," he said.

Step Four involves running a campaign that somehow avoids the mistakes of past efforts to foist tax hikes on Californians. In 2009, state legislators and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger placed six budget-related measures on a special-election ballot. They combined "temporary" tax increases with proposed limits on spending. They all lost by nearly two-to-one. "The public is very, very skeptical of anything Sacramento does," Adam Mendelsohn, a Schwarzenegger advisor, told the Los Angeles Times.

Jerry Brown is nothing if not politically savvy. He will no doubt try to craft a budget plan that avoids previous pitfalls. It will be fascinating to see how he handles the state’s powerful public employee unions, which were major backers of his candidacy but are at the heart of much of the state’s budget problem.

No matter how careful he is, however, Mr. Brown will face tough odds. Look for California to once again be a leading indicator of public opinion just as Congress begins its own debate on how to tackle next year’s federal budget.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.