Table 3 also shows the governor’s proposals and the eventual enactment of the subsequent budget for 2012-13. We will return to the proposals and enactment in the narrative below. As pointed out in the introductory section, the budget – although it is enacted in discrete units for particular fiscal years – is in fact a continual process. One year’s budget blends into the next. New Fiscal Year and New Approaches “…We’re not finished.” Governor Brown on signing the 2011-12 budget17 If anything was learned by Governor Brown from the legislative process that produced the budget for 2011-12, it was that political polarization meant that there would be no prospect for cooperation from Republican legislators regarding the next budget. The world had changed since the late 1970s when he first entered the governor’s office, a period in which cross-party deals and compromises were more common. Budgeting via compromise was no longer on the table. Governor Brown – who wanted to be the governor who ended California’s ongoing fiscal instability – surely had to be uncomfortable with signing a budget that was premised on a phantom $4 billion windfall that would come from no-one-could-say-where. His initial idea on taking office had been to obtain voter approval for a tax extension. Now that the taxes he wanted to have extended had in fact expired, he couldn’t pursue the extension approach. He could still ask voters for more tax revenue, but any such permission would have to come through the initiative process and not via a proposition enacted by the legislature (which would require GOP votes). And he would face the disadvantage of having to ask voters for new taxes, not extensions of old – albeit temporary – ones. Thinking Big “I’ve never seen a CEQA exemption that I don’t like.” Governor Brown commenting on the state’s major environmental law often used to block big projects by opponents18
17
Quoted in “California’s $85.9 Billion Budget: Here are the Major Provisions,” Sacramento Bee, July 1, 2011. Available at http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/01/v-mobile/3740427_californias-859-billion-budget.html. 18 Quoted in David Siders, “California Gov. Jerry Brown Upsets Environmentalist Friends with his CEQA Critique,” Sacramento Bee, July 31, 2012. Available at http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/31/4676598/california-gov-jerrybrown-upsets.html.
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