Californians from Governor Jerry Brown. Below is Ann Salisbury Doneen’s response to the governor’s letter.
‘An open letter to the people of California’
When I became Governor again-28 years after my last term ended in 1983-California was facing a $266 billion budget deficit. It was the result of years of failing to match spending with tax revenues as budget gimmicks instead of honest budgeting became the norm.
In January, I proposed a budget that combined deep cuts with a temporary extension of some existing taxes. It was a balanced approach that would have finally closed our budget gap.
I asked the legislature to enact this plan and to allow you, the people of California, to vote on it. I believed that you had the right to weigh in on this important choice: should we decently fund our schools or lower our taxes? I don’t know how you would have voted, but we will never know. The Republicans refused to provide the four votes needed to put this measure on the ballot.
Forced to act alone, Democrats went ahead and enacted massive cuts and the first honest on-time budget in a decade. But without the tax extensions, it was simply not possible to eliminate the state’s structural deficit.
The good news is that our financial condition is much better than a year ago. We cut the ongoing budget deficit by more than half, reduced the state’s workforce by about 5,500 positions and cut unnecessary expenses like cell phones and state cars. We actually cut state expenses by over $10 billion. Spending is now at levels not seen since the ’70s. Our state’s credit rating has moved from “negative” to “stable,” laying the foundation for job creation and a stronger economic recovery.
Unfortunately, the deep cuts we made came at a huge cost. Schools have been hurt and state funding for our universities has been reduced by 25 percent. Support for the elderly and the disabled has fallen to where it was in 1983. Our courts suffered debilitating reductions.
The stark truth is that without new tax revenues, we will have no other choice but to make deeper and more damaging cuts to schools, universities, public safety and our courts.
That is why I am filing today an initiative with the Attorney General’s office that would generate nearly $7 billion in dedicated funding to protect education and public safety. I am going directly to the voters because I don’t want to get bogged down in partisan gridlock as happened this year. The stakes are too high.
My proposal is straightforward and fair. It proposes a temporary tax increase on the wealthy, a modest and temporary increase in the sales tax, and guarantees that the new revenues be spent only on education. Here are the details:
-Millionaires and high-income earners will pay up to 2 percent higher income taxes for five years. No family making less than $500,000 a year will see their income taxes rise. In fact, fewer than 2 percent of California taxpayers will be affected by this increase.
-There will be a temporary 1/2 cent increase in the sales tax. Even with this temporary increase, sales taxes will still be lower than what they were less than six months ago.
-This initiative dedicates funding only to education and public safety, not on other programs that we simply cannot afford.
This initiative will not solve all of our fiscal problems. But it will stop further cuts to education and public safety.
I ask you to join with me to get our state back on track.
Governor Jerry Brown
In response
Dear Gov. Brown,
I am a loyal and devoted Democrat, but I can’t buy what you are trying to tell me in your open letter to the people of California that you emailed me.
You are willing to spend from $7 to $30 million to bulldoze Malibu Lagoon using bond money that Californians authorized for the clean water act, for drinking water. Malibu Lagoon does not need to be bulldozed. The animals there do not need to die for a make-work, unnecessary boondoggle based on faulty science and greenwashed environmental organizations that have gone greedy.
There is a much better way to handle the Malibu Lagoon situation. Just halt it and save the money.
Use the bond money for real drinking water projects, not a project that has nothing to do with drinking water, that is going to put homes in harm’s way, create an artificial lake that never was there before, and leave the door open for further bulldozing projects there every five years.
Because you favor this project, everything else you are saying is now suspect.
Halt the Malibu Lagoon project and I might believe you are open minded. But more than 5,000 signatures on a petition are being ignored. A massive letter-writing campaign to your office has been ignored. I myself sent a letter and have called. I have never received an acknowledgment or an answer.
My colleagues, friends, and environmental activists, including artists, birders, business people, industry people, waitresses, plumbers, physicians, attorneys, and construction people-and, yes, UCLA biology professors too-agree that this project will destroy the heart of Malibu as well as the animals who rely on the habitat at the lagoon.
Until we get a satisfactory solution to the devastation that is planned there, we have no choice but to oppose you, Jerry Brown, and everyone who supports what you are trying to accomplish.
So, do not bother sending me notes like this anymore because it shows how hypocritical you are.
Ann Doneen