welcome to last year

[essentialsaltes]

I stumbled across this article from last year about the CA governor's race. It offers the rather surprising fact that California has one of the lowest state-employee-per-capita rates in the country. A mere 108 per 10,000, compared to, say, Delaware with 305/10,000.

Maybe this means the 'wasteful spending' is not so much from the government employees, but from all the stuff that has been farmed out to the private sector.

Not to bash the private sector too much, since obviously a lot of that outsourced stuff is bond issue things that voters have demanded without much thought for the cost when the bills come due.

Comments

[donovan k. loucks (from livejournal.com)]

Mike,

It took me a while to re-locate this:

http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/Freedom_in_the_50_States.pdf

Here's the pertinent quote: "California simply needs to cut government spending. The budgetary categories most out of line with the rest of the country are public safety, natural resources and environment, and administration. The state actually does not spend more than average on education and social services." (p. 26)

Donovan

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

Looking at the 09-10 enacted budget [p.37] and Governor Moonbeam's proposed budget, the totals of those things don't even equal the current shortfall of $26.6 billion.

2009-2010
Corrections (for which I read public safety) - 8.2B
natural resources and environment - 7.2B
Leg/Jud/Exec (for which I read administration) - 4.6B
total = $20 billion

2011-2012
Corrections - 9.2B
natural resources and environment - 6.7B
Leg/Jud/Exec - 5.8B
total = $21.7 billion

If we zeroed them out, we'd still be in the red. So just cutting back on those 'wasteful' items to the national average is not going to be enough.