California legislators will forfeit pay until they pass a balanced budget, said State Controller John Chiang last Tuesday after Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a budget that would reduce the Cal State University’s state support by $650 million without extending state taxes.
The CSU’s budget currently faces a $500 million reduction, but may face double the cutback if three state taxes are not extended before the beginning of the next academic year.
Democratic lawmakers approved a budget that would further reduce state support to the CSU, but Brown said it contained “legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings,” after vetoing the bill.
The budget proposal did not gain favor with the CSU either.
“Additional cuts to our campuses and programs are not a viable option if we are to maintain student access to quality programs, courses and services,” said Chancellor Charles B. Reed in a statement before the governor’s veto.
The CSU plans to increase annual tuition by as much as 32 percent, or $1,566, if the state implements what Reed called a “scorched earth budget,” an all cuts budget that would slash state support to the CSU by $1 billion.
Brown’s current budget proposals outline either a $500 million or $1 billion reduction to the CSU based on whether state legislators can approve a ballot measure that would put tax extensions to a vote.
“We have previously indicated that if our budget was cut further,” Reed said, “we would have no choice but to increase revenue by raising student tuition and limiting enrollment.”
State lawmakers will lose as much as $261 a day, saving taxpayers about $50,000 a day, until a balanced budget is presented to the governor.
Proposition 25, approved by voters last year, bars the legislature from pay after June 16 until “the day that the budget bill is presented to the governor.”
According to the law, a balanced budget is one that “would appropriate from the General Fund, for that fiscal year, a total amount that [does not exceed] General Fund revenues for that fiscal year estimated as of the date of the budget bill’s passage.”
Chiang said he used this measure in order to decide whether state lawmakers deserved their pay under Proposition 25.
“While the vetoed budget contains solutions of questionable achievability and some to which I am personally opposed, current law provides no authority for my office to second-guess them in my enforcement of Proposition 25,”said Chiang in a statement.
“My job is not to substitute my policy judgment for that of the legislature and the governor,” Chiang said. “It is to be the honest-broker of the numbers.”
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