Budget Strategy?

We are all anticipating the first official direction of our new Governor on Monday, January 10th (projected) with his release of his January budget proposal for the 2011-12 school and budget year.  While the numbers are staggering and so out-of-balance that it is hard to know how bad off we are in California, it is clear that the Governor and Legislature has a $28-30 BILLION problem to solve.  Not wanting to live with this budget albatross for the next 4 years, I am sure that Governor Brown will do all that he can to ameliorate the problem early.

He has indicated in multiple settings that the January proposal will not be optimistic and in fact, has suggested that we all be "sitting down" when we see it for the first time.  It seems that the strategy is to provide us all with a dose of reality regarding the severity and size of the problem.  So what happens after January and we head to the spring when budget-building gets serious?  The common theory (in Sacramento) is that the Governor will be advocating for revenue enhancements (i.e., tax increases) to offset the horrific impacts of trying to reconcile a budget deficit of $30 Billion.  The high-risk strategy is that when we see how big the problem is we will all agree (at least 2/3 of us) to increased taxing capacity -- which would "buy-back" the budget and service reductions.

As to public schools across the State of California, there are several possible impacts -- based on the apparent budget strategy:

• As we in K-12 education are about 40% of the California budget, we will take reductions like the many other departments and services throughout the state.  As one very veteran and influential staff person said, "the budget you have right now, is the best you will have for the next two years."  He thought we could begin to see things begin to improve in 2014.
• An attempt to move the funding of schools back to a more localized approach (rather than state) where local citizens can determine how they would like to support their local schools.  This also has the impact of making more of the $30 Billion problem a local problem rather than a state problem.

So from all that I can gather from our multiple Sacramento and State sources -- we need to be prepared to batten down the hatches and prepare for the storm ahead -- always with the realization that there is always the calm on the other side of the storm.