Selected recent California newspaper editorials

by The Associated Press

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San Jose Mercury News:

“Even in tight times, Schwarzenegger must start on school reforms”

First health care and water, now education.

For Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, it’s a trifecta of policy defeats in one year.

At least with health care, he gave it a good ride. Education reform has been stuck in the stable, an opportunity wasted.

That’s a shame because, even amid a state war over budget cuts, it’s possible to implement some recommendations of the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence. That won’t happen unless Schwarzenegger is willing to saddle up.

So far, he has botched everything. Schwarzenegger’s dilemma is obvious. He’s demanding $4.8 billion in budget cuts when the committee is estimating it would cost $10.5 billion more — a 20 percent increase in education spending — to enact reforms statewide.

But some of the reforms require little money, such as giving districts more freedom to decide how to spend money and letting them credential their own administrators.

Schwarzenegger is coming around to the need to raise taxes to spare the schools huge cuts. That’s not good enough.

The schools will drag down the state’s economy unless they’re improved.

California can protect K-12 schools and community colleges and enact reforms now. And the governor must lead the charge.

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Contra Costa Times:

“Governor hints at taxes”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding a series of town meetings across the state not only to promote his ideas about budget reform, but to float some trial balloons as well.

That is what he did Wednesday in Pleasant Hill, where he once again touted his proposal to limit state spending to an average of the annual rate of revenue growth over previous years.

But Schwarzenegger, despite his reluctance to impose new levies to balance the budget, suggested that the state should consider taxes on services as well as goods. Such an expansion of taxes is all but certain to meet with stiff resistance by Republicans, and perhaps some Democrats, in the Legislature.

The problem with a service tax, aside from convincing two-thirds of the Legislature that the state needs one, is deciding which services to tax. Would medical services, which are a large share of the service industry, be included? What about financial services, another substantial sector? ...

It would not be unrealistic to consider his service tax proposal, along with his possible support of reducing income tax deductions, as the first step toward accepting significant tax increases.

There could be a deal in the making that includes new revenues along with a major long-term reform that includes multiyear budgets, spending growth control and large reserve funds.

Such an agreement may be just a pipe dream, but we thought we’d just throw it out there.

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The Sacramento Bee:

“Enforcing prison overtime limit is long overdue”

Outraged at out-of-control prison overtime costs, the California Legislature in 2003 established an 80-hour-a-month overtime cap for correctional officers. That cap, however, has never been enforced. The state has many prison guards who work more than 80 hours overtime in a month, a serious safety issue.

This mismanagement of work hours has come at a huge cost to the state—$471 million in overtime costs last year (up from $53 million a decade ago). It remains a big contributor to budget deficits.

So now the department has sent out a letter informing all prisons that as of March 10 officers “no longer will be allowed” to work more than 80 hours of overtime in a month. Prisons must track and “immediately report” all instances where workers exceed the 80-hour cap.

Here’s hoping that this departmental missive is more than words on paper and is actually enforced. To make that happen, the regular and overtime hours of each prison worker plus records of vacation and sick leave taken should be automated and vigilantly monitored. Workers with excessive overtime hours should be placed on a “do not call” list and prevented from working overtime.

Right-sizing California’s prisons through sentencing and other reforms is a major long-term budget and policy issue. But basic prison management is another.

The mismanagement of overtime hours is a direct, persistent multimillion-dollar driver of state budget deficits that legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can and should get under control.