This story was reported for San Diego News Network on August 25, 2009.
Although the balanced budget was passed more than a month ago, California lawmakers are not seeing a break anytime soon – they still must deal with prisons, credit ratings and angry Californians.
How many prison inmates?: The question as to how many inmates should be released from California prisons is still on the table.
Last week, the State Senate passed a bill agreeing to reduced prison funding by $1.2 billion by releasing 37,000 inmates – but the State Assembly is still mulling over it. Why the hold up, you ask?
Well, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) said she wants a “responsible plan.” In a statement released by her office Monday, Bass said calls and meetings regarding the prison system were held throughout the weekend.
“Work is moving forward on a revised plan to increase public safety, improve the effectiveness of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and reduce state budget costs,” Bass said. “When we arrive at a responsible plan that can earn the support of the majority of the Assembly and makes sense to the people of California, we will take that bill up on the Assembly floor. We will provide advance notice when a vote on the public safety package is to be scheduled.”
What does responsible mean? Possibly, releasing 10,000 less inmates so that only 27,000 inmates would be out on the streets, said Bass last Friday.
In an editorial by Natasha Minsker, death penalty policy director for Northern California’s American Civil Liberties Union, she criticized the Assembly for not immediately passing the same budget package as the Senate.
Published by the California Progress Report, the editorial stated: “The bill passed by the Senate is by no means perfect, but it’s an important first step in the right direction – it will only begin to get us close to the $1.2 billion in cuts needed from the prison budget and implement small but long overdue criminal justice reforms. In passing the bill, the Senate showed tremendous leadership and put healing California corrections and our public safety first. Doubt is currently looming over whether our Assembly will match the Senate’s courage.”
California’s credit rating is stable: Moody’s Investor Service and Standard & Poor have taken California off its “watch list,” which means California’s credit rating with both agencies is stable, for now.
According to Financial Planning, Moody will keep California’s rating at Baa1 While Standard & Poor’s rating for California stays at A.
FP states that California’s ability to garner a loan from JP Morgan of $1.5 billion and its IOU status, allows the credit agencies to be more confident in California.
However, the third agency – Fitch Ratings – still has California on its bad list.
Schwarzenegger is digging Twitter: On Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted that he loved Twitter. In fact, the Gov. loves it so much – he’s visiting its headquarters in San Francisco sometime this week and has encouraged “followers” to tweet him questions they may have for Tweet officials.
As of Tuesday, Schwarzenegger has tweeted 538 times and has more than 950,000 followers.
Just another day for the Gov., I suppose.
No education, no food: A hunger strike in protest of education cuts concluded Monday with hundreds of Californians asking Schwarzenegger to find more revenue and give back the funding to students.
Organized by Solidarity to Achieve & Recover Valued Education (S.T.A.R.V.E.) and held in the Oxnard School District, the hunger strike lasted seven days and ends with Oxnard Trustee Anna Del Rio-Barba personally delivering the petition and signatures to Schwarzenegger on Tuesday.
The hunger strike, which included local attorney Bonifacio “Bonny” Garcia, garnered nearly 1,000 signatures supporting the petition.
Garcia said, although he isn’t certain the dollar amount of the cuts will change, he sees the hunger strike as a success.
“The whole purpose was to bring attention the issue and we succeeded,” he said. “It’s getting a lot of attention from elected officials.”
He also said he felt OK after not eating for seven straight days.
The $6 billion cut to education meant that there would be 42 fewer hours of instructional teaching each year. In addition, S.T.A.R.V.E. participants say this cut in conjunction with cuts made last year mean that educators will have to reduce funding for each student by $2,100.
Retirements on the rise in California: New data shows a big increase in the number of government workers who are retiring.
According to figures compiled by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, civil service retirements in California are running 16 percent ahead of last year.
California state worker retirements from January through July rose by 13 percent over a year earlier, while local government retirements rose 17 percent.
Experts say furloughs, pay cuts, diminishing resources and heavier workloads may be pushing more employees to the exits.
California’s sharp increase in public employee retirements this year goes against a national survey that found that the recession is keeping more state and local government workers from retiring.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.