Legislative Information Alert

Fourth District PTA proposes a convention resolution on the dysfunctional California state budget process

Celia Jaffe, Fourth District PTA Vice President for Advocacy

SANTA ANA, Calif. (February 1, 2009) —Anyone who has paid attention to activities in Sacramento during the past several years would agree: the process for developing and funding California’s annual state budget is broken.

The Fourth District PTA Advocacy Team has written a resolution that addresses this issue and submitted it to the California State PTA for possible consideration at the 2009 state convention. This resolution urges California State PTA and its units, councils and districts to “advocate for and actively support a constitutional amendment that reduces the voting margin for passage of both the California state budget and revenue measures in the California legislature to a 55% vote or a simple majority.”

The resolution was approved by the Fourth District PTA Executive Board at its October meeting.

Currently, the state constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass both the budget and revenue measures. The resulting political stalemate consistently leads to late budgets that are pieced together with borrowing, accounting tactics and unrealistic revenue projections.

Californians have not seen a balanced state budget in years. The budget has been passed on time only four times in the past 20 years. The latest example – California’s 2008-09 budget – was a recording-breaking 85 days late. It was almost immediately out of balance, with a deficit of several billion dollars. The legislators are still arguing about how to solve that problem and are also beginning to work on next year’s budget – with a projected two-year deficit of $41.6 billion.

California is one of only four states that require a two-thirds vote to pass the budget, and one of 11 states that require a two-thirds vote to pass revenue measures. The long drawn-out partisan battles and the unrealistic, poorly-crafted budgets that are produced have created severe hardships and constant budget cuts for our public schools and for the other institutions that protect the health and welfare of our children.

PTA has long stood for adequate and stable funding of public education. Our state’s budget process has resulted in neither stability nor the level of funding necessary to even be at the national average.

Copies of the resolution and the notebook of researched support materials will be available at the Advocacy Roundtable on February 3 (see page 6). Members of the Resolution Committee will happily answer questions or talk to PTA groups about this issue.

The members of the Fourth District PTA Resolution Committee are: Celia Jaffe (chair), Patty Christiansen, Patty Jordan, Steve Lustig, Gisela Meier, Julie Redmond, and Shereen Walter.

If the resolution is accepted for consideration at the convention, it must be approved by a majority of delegates to become an official California State PTA position.