Schwarzenegger Calls For December Special Budget Session
SACRAMENTO (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday announced a special session of the Legislature to take up a $6 billion deficit that emerged just weeks after he signed the state budget.
The session will start Dec. 6, when new lawmakers are sworn into office.
The announcement comes a day after the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said California's budget deficit has grown to $25.4 billion through June 2012. That includes a $6 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year's budget, which was signed Oct. 8 after the longest impasse in state history.
"I know this will be difficult, but as we know from experience, putting off the hard decisions to bring spending in line with our revenues only makes solving the problem more difficult," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "Legislators will have to face the ugly truth that we can only spend the revenues we have."
Much of the gap in the 2010-11 spending plan was foreseeable when lawmakers approved the budget in October, more than 100 days late. The spending plan was filled with overly optimistic assumptions about revenue, cost shifts and about $3.5 billion in federal funding that the legislative analyst predicted will not materialize.
Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor also said the budget relied on putting aside nearly $800 million less for prison medical care than is possible, as well as $400 million in Medi-Cal savings that are impossible because of the late budget and current costs.
Schwarzenegger called the LAO's estimate "a sobering reminder that California's economy is still struggling."
The state's unemployment rate has been stuck at 12 percent or higher since August 2009. The recession has led to a steep drop in tax revenue, with general fund spending about $16 billion less than it was just three years ago.
Lawmakers have made tens of billions of dollars in program cuts during that time.
Schwarzenegger's spokesman, Aaron McLear, said the state Department of Finance will draw up its own estimate of the budget gap and a plan to close it before Dec. 6. He said the governor also will have a package of bills ready to address the crisis.
The special session, Schwarzenegger's 18th since taking office in 2003, will take place just weeks before his successor, Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, is set to be sworn into office on Jan. 3. Brown is required by the state constitution to present a balanced budget plan for the 2011-12 fiscal year just a week later.
Taylor pegged the deficit gap for the 2011-12 fiscal year, which starts July 1, at $19.3 billion, more than a fifth of the $86.6 billion general fund spending plan approved on Oct. 8.
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