Gov. Jerry Brown announced he’ll combine his fourth-term inaugural address with his required annual State of the State speech. No elegant inaugural balls. No big-name concerts.
Whatever Brown, 76, has to say about the next four years — probably his last stint in any elective office — he can do it in one speech. Late the next week, anyway, he’ll be required to disclose specific details of his spending plans for the year when he produces a new budget proposal. Brown will give his combined speech the first day back from the New Year’s holiday weekend on Monday, Jan. 5, at 10 a.m. in the Assembly chamber. Nobody gets to take his/her sweet time returning to Sacramento.
Brown summed up his likely theme in a news conference the day after his reelection.
“It’s a challenge to be fiscally responsible and on the other hand to keep faith with the aspirations and hopes of the Democratic Party. If you abandon [the party], you become really incoherent as a democratic leader. If you totally give in to it, you fall prey to the budget deficits and chaos and public dissatisfaction. So combining the hopes for what government can do with putting reins on what it should not do will define a lot of what I’m going to do in the next four years.”
It’s not exactly bold sounding. But that centrist policy is the reason Brown’s job approval rating is so high and why he got reelected.
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