Budget Crisis Update & Invitation from Assemblymember Nancy Skinner

As you can imagine this is not an easy time to be in office. The state we love is in crisis: revenues keep dropping, our deficit is now at $24 billion, unemployment is double digits, good democrats like our Controller John Chiang predict bankruptcy if we don't close the budget gap by June 30 and the Governor says cuts alone is the only the answer.

I'm writing to update you on my thoughts, let you know what I am doing, and how you might help.

Reality Check

The dilemma is how to close the gap without decimating the state. Cuts the Governor is proposing not only destroy what's left of California's safety net: their impact on the state's economy is disastrous. Ken Jacobs from UC Berkeley's Labor Center just released his analysis. He estimates the combined impact of the Gov's cuts and associated loss of federal funds would result in 400,000 to 600,000 more Californians losing their jobs.

The path to avoiding all cuts is fraught with difficulty: most revenues require 2/3 vote (needing at least 3 Republican votes in both Assembly and Senate). The benefit of 2/3 revenues is that they go into effect immediately but Republicans have so far said they will not vote for any new revenues. If the Republicans refuse than the only option is majority vote revenues. One problem is majority vote revenues take 90 days to go into effect, and they require the Governor's signature, who as you've no doubt read in the press is advocating all cuts.

While we have to do everything we can to minimize harmful cuts, California's deficit is so large that substantial cuts can not be avoided. While the Governor's proposal is $20 billion in cuts and $4 billion in non-cut solutions, I am hoping we can achieve at least $10 to $12 billion in non-cut solutions.

The Governor has the ability to move a few Republicans, he could also choose to sign majority vote revenues. So the fight is on, and pressure needs to be put on him.

What I'm doing

Most of my colleagues in the Assembly, are mobilizing to avoid an all cuts scenario. Speaker Bass asked me to co-lead our caucus' "fight back" effort to develop strategies and materials for our websites, town hall meetings and more. Frank Russo, my Chief of Staff is keeping the blogger world up to date and we are meeting with statewide groups and organizations like Mom's Rising urging them to mobilize their networks to "Save Our State" demanding that cuts be balanced with new revenues.

We have urged John Burton, new Chair of the California Democratic Party, to mobilize the State Party into action, which he has (check out http://www.cadems.org), and activists here in the 14th AD have also set up http://www.fixthebudgetnow.org to mobilize people to contact their legislators and the Governor.

To help people in AD14 fully understand the difficult choices we face next week my office is hosting three Budget Summits. We were incredibly fortunate to get Next10 to co-host these with us. Next10 has developed "The California Budget Challenge" (http://www.nextten.org/challenge/) an interactive simulation containing current state data that lets people try to resolve $24 billion deficit by voting on budget options in real-time with instant response clickers. Everyone who attends gets the opportunity to decide how much to spend on schools, prisons, the environment, and other state programs- and how they'd pay for them. Dates and times for the Summits are:

Thursday, June 18 6:30-8:00 Emeryville City Hall
Friday, June 19, 4-5:30, State Building, 1515 Clay Street, Oakland
Saturday, June 20, 10am-12pm, Pleasant Hill Community Center, 320 Civic Drive, Pleasant Hill

How You Can Help

-Pressure the Governor. Initiate your own action or go to http://www.fixthebudgetnow.org, http://www.cadem.org, the Courage Campaign website or any other of the many groups who are working to minimize the cuts to health, schools, CalGrants, CalWorks, in-Home Health Workers, State Parks or more.

- Help me call AD14 residents to invite them to our Budget Summits. We are calling Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening, call my office 510 286-1400 or e-mail Angela at Angela.Ramirez@asm.ca.gov to help.

- Join us to staff one of the Budget Summits - this coming Thursday, Friday or Saturday, Call Maha at my District office, 510 286-1400.

- Write your own op ed, letter to the Editor or blog post.