By Count Friedrich von Olsen
As the June 15  deadline for the state budget approaches, things are in an utter state of confusion in Sacramento, which is another way of saying that the Democrats are in charge…
Within the ranks of the ruling Democratic Party in California, fights are breaking out among its members over how they can best waste the taxpayers’ money…
There are two main proposals by those considered to be the Democrats’ legislative leaders, who all are assuming, incidentally, that the state will collect something like $2.5 billion  – that’s with a b – more than Governor Jerry Brown – also a Democrat – has projected. That the state’s Democratic leaders  are looking at going beyond what the governor is asking for is outrageous…
It is not that I believe Governor Brown’s $115.3 billion spending plan for the state government in fiscal year 2015-16 is a responsible one – I don’t. I think that Governor Brown should be far more conservative in doling out the money he now has at his beck and command, and remember that over the last seven budget cycles government had to be reined  in because it had become to broad and encrusted with unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation, and its sheer weight was burdening the tax-paying businesses that are the state of California’s economic engines…
The economy was sputtering for six straight years and too many of those engines were in dangers of shutting down completely and forever.  It seems the governor has forgotten how hard that money is to come by. The $115.3 billion budget plan Governor Brown sent over to the legislature two-and-a-half weeks ago was $7.3 billion more than the budget the legislature approved in June 2014 for the current fiscal year. I think the more responsible way to deal with the uptick in revenue the state is receiving is to salt some of it away, restore funding to many of the essential programs – like state courts – that have been drastically cut in years past, and judiciously parcel out the rest based on the tangible benefits these infusions of revenue will provide…
If Jerry Brown can be likened to a frat boy who found an extra ten dollars in the fraternity kitty and decided to blow it all on a couple of six packs of beer, then the Democratic leadership qualifies as a group who, finding the same ten dollars, propose now to venture it along with a $90 promissory note to secure $100 worth of whisky…
According to Governor Brown, as of earlier this month he is projecting the state will receive  $6.7  billion more in revenue throughout 2015-16 than he had projected just four months earlier, in January. That alone is an astounding recalculation and adjustment. The State Senate and Assembly Democratic leadership actually want to commit to spending $8.2 billion more in 2015-16 than the governor projected in January we would have in income during that same period…
How is it that the guys in the Statehouse are relying on figures so different from what the guy in the Governor’s Mansion is using? A little bird told me it is because the first set are rendered up by the California Department of Finance and the latter by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. I have a novel suggestion: Let’s compare which has the most accurate projections over a three-year period and, in the interest of eliminating waste, duplication and inaccuracy in government, close out, permanently, whichever entity finishes in second place in this friendly contest of comparison