This story was reported for the San Diego News Network on May 13, 2010.
California is near the end of its fiscal year, and though budget cuts have already affected nearly everyone, the sun may not be coming out anytime soon. At least, that’s what some experts say but we’ll find out on Friday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger releases his May Revise.
Schwarzenegger’s Revise: The gov will release his revised budget Friday to kick the weekend off right (just joking) and according to his press folks, there will be “terrible cuts.”
According to a Reuters report, the governor “has said he won’t seek tax increases to bolster California’s finances.”
“The Republican’s forecast for the budget gap may rise after revenue fell short of his targets last month.
‘We can’t get through this deficit without very terrible cuts,’ Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear told reporters in Sacramento. ‘We don’t believe that raising taxes right now is the right thing to do.’
California’s revenue in April, when income-tax payments are due, trailed the governor’s estimates by $3.6 billion, or 26 percent. The gap wiped out gains from the previous four months, leaving collections $1.3 billion behind projections for the budget year that ends in June.”
Also in the Reuters report, “Schwarzenegger’s newest plan will revise the proposals introduced in January to account for the tax-collection shortages.”
Poor wives: California’s wives are seeing hard hits from the recession and may possibly feel more pain with budget cuts.
According to CalCoastNews.com, a study by a nonpartisan organization shows a “dramatic increase” in the number of wives becoming the dominant bread winner.
“The analysis, released Tuesday by the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan budget study group, shows that the number of women taking over household financial responsibility rose a stunning 77 percent from 2008 to 2009.
The new study also warns that past and likely budget cuts in the state’s new safety programs and health insurance for the poor, including CalWorks and Medi-Cal, will disproportionately affect low-income women and their families — people who make up the bulk of the clients who rely on such services.
Also, the study found that women in California lost fewer jobs than men, but they still lost work. Unemployment among women doubled to ten percent from 2006 to 2009.”
Not only are husbands relying more on their significant others, the study points out that women still earn less than men. Lame.
Yup, another protest: Of course, this wouldn’t be a complete CBCD if it didn’t include news about a student protest.
Students at UC Irvine continue to protest cuts to higher education even after a massive March 4 rally that attracted more than 1,000 participants.
According to The Associated Press, the protests are attracting a major group of minority students. The report focuses on different minority students including Jesse Cheng.
“Cheng is a third-year Asian-American studies major at the University of California, Irvine, a campus less than five decades old in the middle of Orange County, a place of strip malls and subdivisions that gave birth to the ultraconservative John Birch Society.
Comfortable talking with both administrators and anarchists, Cheng is a presence at protests but avoids getting arrested. He doesn’t want to put his graduation at risk or upset his mother, who worked hard to get him here and worries for his safety because she witnessed what happened to dissidents in her native China.
Cheng is part of a growing movement of minority students rallying around a new cause — fighting a budget crisis that’s undermining access to higher education at a time when students of color have become a stronger demographic force.
‘For a lot of students of color, this is our dream and our hope — to get to college,’ said Cheng, who is about to start a one-year term representing students from all 10 University of California campuses on the system’s Board of Regents. ‘We never thought we’d make it and we’re here. And we’re not going to give it up so easily.'”
On a final and ironic note, Schwarznegger received a “doctor of laws honorary degree” from Emory University in Georgia this week. SDNN’s Steven Bartholow will offer his thoughts on Schwarzenegger’s new degree in this Friday’s Political Sense.
Associated Press writer Judy Lin contributed to this report. Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.