California’s winners and losers in bids for more state budget aid

In the months leading up to last month’s passage of a new state budget, three major public service coalitions mounted full-blown lobbying campaigns to obtain billions of dollars in additional state aid.

Although all three said more state financing was vital to keep their services alive, they were hard sells because Capitol politicians were confronting a $30-plus billion budget deficit.

Letters to the Editor

Tripping to Green

EDITOR:

Russia.

Summary

When the final budget was drafted, one of those three — the state’s public transit systems — had pretty much scored what they were seeking. A second — the state’s hospitals — got a partial win. The third — city and county providers of programs for the state’s huge population of homeless people — struck out.

Transit operators told Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators that ridership on buses and rail transit had not recovered from severe declines during the COVID19 pandemic and were facing a “fiscal cliff” that could mean sharp reductions in service.

Three major providers of public services mounted strong campaigns for more state aid, citing financial crises, but the new state budget’s outcomes varied greatly.

Initially, Newsom shrugged off transit pleas but with support from sympathetic legislators, particularly those from the transit-heavy San Francisco Bay Area, the final budget deal provides $5.1 billion over four years with flexibility to use the money for either construction or operations.

Citing a study, the California Hospital Association said a fifth of California’s hospitals were in danger of closing, in part because reimbursements from Medicare, the federal medical care program for the elderly, and MediCal, the federal-state system of care for the poor, fail to cover costs of services.

The report said in 2022 California hospital care costs ballooned by $23.4 billion over prepandemic levels, leading to losses of $8.5 billion, on top of $12 billion in pandemic-related losses. Medical care providers won some reprieve in the new budget, which will levy a tax on medical

Guest Column

Caltrans and the El Dorado County Department of Transportation need to do more to accommodate the Bay Area and Sacramento area travelers.

In addition to making the lights green on holidays, they should also:

Convert Pony Express into a “stop and pottie” so people driving up in the summer and winter can do their business right on someone’s lawn or driveway.

Add lots of traffic circles at the Cameron Park Drive exit and Schnell School Road exit since people from the Bay Area love them.

And they should widen Highway 50 with four additional bike lanes for eastbound and westbound and paint them bright green and make it a $5,000 fine to cross them.

Then each holiday they could designate a free trash it up day. In the winter visitors could bring up cheap plastic sleds and dirty diapers and just leave them at Pollock Pines offramps.

During major holidays like the Fourth of July encourage visitors to dump trash off at Emerald Bay and at Pioneer Trail.

Yes! That’s a bad trip. Green or otherwise.

MATT SILVEIRA Placerville

Conservatives

EDITOR:

John Garon defining conservatives? That makes about as much sense as Vladimir Putin defining liberty.

Garon says conservatives resist change. You may be right. We resist the change of inflation from under 2% to over triple that. We resist the change that released thousands of violent felons from prisons and armed parolees after 10-day timeouts in jail. We resist energy dependence and the meteoric rise in fuel prices. We resist giving looters a free hand to empty stores. We resist the Justice Department going after one president while the other took classified papers from a SKIF that is not allowed, has millions of Chinese dollars in the bank and overlooked Clinton physically destroying subpoenaed evidence. We resist the Justice Department becoming an arm of state power like in

Yep, John, we’re just one big batch of resistance. And before you cheer that Justice Department sword of Damocles that is being wielded against the former president, remember that the hand on the handle of that sword may not always be yours.

GEORGE ALGER Placerville

2022-23 Grand Jury reports

EDITOR:

The 2022-23 El Dorado County Grand Jury reports are posted. Your fellow citizens comprise the grand jury and spent the last year conducting interviews and researching various topics with the goal to make our county better. There were four investigations completed: Building and Planning, Procurement and Contracts, Grizzly Flat Water District and a $28,000 sick leave overpayment.

We hope everyone in the county will take the time to read them at edcgov.us/Government/GrandJury/ Pages/2022-2023-Grand-Jury.aspx.

GINA GRIECO POSEY Shingle Springs

Look around

EDITOR:

Ilove it here in El Dorado County — and not just for its aesthetic beauty either. Heck the Bay Area is beautiful, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I love it here because our schools score the highest in the state. We trust our judges, District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Office to do the best they can to protect our society. No coincidence that we live in one of the safest places on Earth. And even though nearly 200,000 people live here, I feel a real sense of civic pride for our community. That is why I don’t understand why people from the Democratic Party want to change things to be more like the rest of California. Where are their progressive programs working? Why would we want us to be like ’Frisco?

While I believe that we can always do better, the last thing I want to do is turn our county into a Sacramento or a San Jose.

KEN STEERS Cameron Park