Governor Taking California Right Off the Cliff

Article List

Governor Taking California Right Off the Cliff
06/30/2009

New Details on the Governor's Latest Draconian CalWORKs Proposals

We know more of what is in the Gov’s latest human service plan. It imposes full family sanctions on families who are in sanction status for more than 90 days. It limits time on aid to 24 months instead of 60 months. It appears that the proposal only affects persons required to participate in welfare to work activities but not safety net cases or child only cases. It also imposes a self-sufficiency review every six months if a family is sanctioned even though the full family sanction would terminate families after 90 days of non-compliance. It limits the Safety Net to children whose parents are meeting work requirements and it limits Child Only cases to 24 months. It repeals the CalWORKs COLA. It restores finger imaging and expands it to IHSS. And earlier report that it may include CFAP is apparently incorrect. So far the Democrats in the Legislature are saying a loud no to all of this.

Hard to say where all this is going tonight. The Legislature and the Governor must agree by tonight to stop $5 billion in payments from the 2008-9 budget, including $3 billion for education. The Assembly, with strong Republican support, approved the so-called “deferrals” last week. But the Senate Republicans, at the urging of the Governor, refused to vote for the deferral yesterday. The Governor is reportedly demanding that all of his reforms proposed over the weekend be approved in order for him to sign the deferral bill. If the deferral is not approved it not only pushes the Controller into issuing IOUs but it also creates a $3 billion increase in the Prop 98 budget that is not accounted for in the conference committees compromise proposal. It seemed clear from last night’s floor discussion that there is little hope for resolution of the larger budget deficit. Darrell Steinberg said the Legislature is willing to “consider” the Governor’s proposals but that it might take until July 17^th to put those proposals together into a package with the rest of the budget proposals. So we may have some more work ahead of us. but if the deferrals don’t pass tonight, it gets a whole lot worse.