(SACRAMENTO, CA) Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee and Chair of the Budget Conference Committee, announces the release of a video California State Budget Myths, which confronts three enduring budget myths and offers her views on key underlying truths about the state budget.”Enduring myths and misconceptions cloud common sense about our state budget,” said Evans. “These fictions must be cast aside to responsibly confront the enormous gap in our budget that follows years of sustained cuts, with less time and fewer options to solve it. As the budget conference committee process begins, we must get past these myths and solve our budget problem.”
Evans’ video runs for nearly eight minutes and confronts the following myths.
- Myth number one: “We just need to control our out of state spending.” Evans explains that spending has only increased in real terms by $15 billion over the last ten years, mostly through voter approved initiatives. And, the state has cut $26.7 billion from the budget since 2003.
- Myth number two: “State bureaucracy is too big and inefficient. If we simply eliminated the waste, fraud, and abuse we could balance our budget.” Evans counters that even if every state worker were laid off we could not eliminate our state’s budget challenges. And, in the process, no one would be on the job to maintain our highways, to staff the Department of Motor Vehicles, or to manage our state parks.
- Myth number three: “Bad behavior in the Capitol prevents a budget from being adopted on time.” Evans acknowledges that there is gridlock every year in enacting a budget. But she explains that the two-thirds vote requirement to pass a budget creates a process where a small minority of legislators can hijack the process for items unrelated to budgeting.
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/4731129[/vimeo]
There’s a silver lining in the failure of the propositions this week. Californians might actually realize how broken our system is – and be willing to have a constitutional convention (which is badly needed) to straighten out the mess.
It appears that Noreen Evans is not living in reality and is a liability to the fiscal future of the state.