Message to Arnold: Terminate the Bifurcation
This article from the San Francisco Chronicle supports my contention that Gov. Schwarzenegger has many more options for solving the Kah-lee-fornia budget mess than his bifurcated choice that I discussed yesterday.
A scene in the blockbuster movie “Spider-Man” is eerily similar to one now playing out in Sacramento. In the movie, Spider-Man’s enemy, the Green Goblin, dangles Peter Parker’s true love off a bridge. In his other hand, he dangles a cable car full of children. Suggesting that Spider-Man cannot save both, he demands that the hero choose which he will let die.
In essence, this is what some advocates for tax increases are seeking to do to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Either break your pledge not to raise taxes or break your pledge to protect quality-of-life priorities. “We’ve already done all the easy stuff,” they argue. “Taxes are the only option. Choose.”
The other options include performance-based cuts, competition, renegotiating labor contracts, reorganizing governemnt and moving to a two-year state budget:
California has two environmental agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Resources Agency. We also have two tax-collecting bodies, the Franchise Tax Board and the Board of Equalization. We can save almost $900 million simply by reorganizing state government and reducing duplicate, overlapping or unneeded services such as these. By combining similar departments and programs such as the EPA with the Resources Agency, the taxpayers save on overhead costs and service levels improve through a refocused mission that is strategy-based.
That is just one of many suggestions. Why can’t Schwarzenegger with his superpowers see more than two options, a fiscal-responsibility bond and raising taxes, which are actually one option–raising taxes–disguised as two?
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