Governor Jerry Brown’s 800 Pound Gorilla in the Room, Taxpayers vs. Costly State Employee’s Pensions; Budget Killing State Employees’ Pensions Still Being Ignored by Governor in Budget Proposals:
By Marc Chamot
Obviously, California’s new governor Jerry Brown has somewhat come to his senses. Aware that the Fed isn’t going to bail out the state from their $25 Billion dollar budget gaps miseries anytime soon, he’s taking action on his own. He’s looking everywhere, but the right places to make those cuts.
Brown’s plan includes $12.5 billion in spending cuts, primarily to entitlements, and $12 billion from a five-year extension of the "temporary" income- and sales-tax hikes that the legislature passed two years ago. But good luck on having voter approved tax increases, it isn’t coming, because Californians have already said they will not vote for anymore tax increases until Sacramento get their house in order.
“Mr. Brown, a Democrat, would have to pick off two Republicans in the assembly and two in the senate to obtain a supermajority for extending the tax increases. Conceding that Republicans are unlikely to go along with Democrats this time around, he has asked the legislature to put a proposition on a June special election ballot to extend the hikes. But getting the extension on the ballot would also require a two-thirds vote of the legislature, and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform has warned Republicans that a vote for putting the extension on the ballot is equivalent to a vote to raise taxes.”
It’s war! Brown's still avoiding critical issues on budget gap and deficits. It’s going to be taxpayers vs. state employee’s pensions.
Brown’s proposals to eliminate some of the state’s useless agencies, subsidizing costly state universities, FREE cell phones for public employees and cuts in social services, among others, including 10% salary cuts for state employees, isn’t going far enough.
He’s still avoiding that 800 pound gorilla in the room, state employees’ budget killing pensions.
According to San Francisco Chronicle’s Chip Johnson, Jerry Brown skips biggest budget problem: pensions “It was no surprise to see Gov. Jerry Brown take bold and immediate steps to try to derail the state's runaway budget, but the biggest obstacle blocking the tracks remains.
Calper, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, is still the 600-pound gorilla in the room.
At a Monday morning news conference, the state's new governor laid out his plans to cut $12 billion in spending and raise $12 billion in revenue to present a balanced $84.6 billion budget in June.
Days after announcing the elimination of the office of the secretary of education, which operated at a cost of nearly $2 million last year, Brown said the only department spared reductions would be the state's primary education system, which covers kindergarten through high school.
Social service programs would suffer deep cuts under the governor's budget offer along with $500 million each from the state's two public university systems. And while Brown proposed a little more than $300 million in wage reductions to nearly 57,000 state workers, everyone knows that the title fight lies ahead.
The 10 percent wage cut to union workers who had not settled on a bargaining agreement is but a drop in the bucket compared with the cost of providing retirement benefits to 1.6 million workers in 3,000 public agencies and school districts across the state.
In the case of the state retirement system's top earners, including many police and fire departments, employee contributions to retirement plans have been minimal. Until last year, Oakland police officers made no contributions to their own retirement plan. And neither did the Oakland City Council.
Brown made only the slightest reference to the issue on Monday when he mentioned that pension reform was coming.
Whatever he presents must come in the form of a detailed plan that shaves from the high end of the system, because three-fourths of CalPERS retirees earned less than $36,000 in retirement benefits in 2010, according to information on the organization's website. Brown is treating pension reform as a separate fight to prepare for in advance - and he's correct.
When you consider the burden created by enormous pension costs for police officer and firefighter services across the state, it is the single-most-important economic issue at the state level.”
You’re right Chip! Obviously we all figured if Brown got elected, that Jerry wouldn’t have the balls or the guts to take on the powerful state employees unions, but we will see what dances from this budget dilemmas. 
