California’s assistance for the neediest endured deep cuts as state leaders closed multibillion-dollar budget deficits and weathered the financial crisis.
Heading into another budget-planning cycle, the state leads the nation in poverty by one widely used measure, even though its minimum wage is among the highest.
Gov. Jerry Brown has made some modest investments to help shore up the social safety net, but has largely stuck to his mantra of austerity and his goal of long-term debt reduction. Restoring reductions in social service programs isn’t easy given voters’ 1988 decision to make education spending a required priority.
As the governor unveiled his spending plan amid rosier revenue projections and a rebounding economy, advocates for the poor and working families are preparing to mount their largest push in years for more resources, saying the state’s approach has been insufficient.
“You’ve brought down the wall of debt,” said Mary Ignatius, the statewide organizer for Parent Voices, which works to expand access to affordable child care. “Now let’s bring down the wall of poverty. Let’s start to prioritize these families who are still left behind.”
California will take in $2.2 billion more than expected in revenue though June, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, though virtually all of the increase will go to meet the state’s constitutional guarantee for schools and community colleges.
Sen. Holly Mitchell, said her hope now is that “we can be in a different place to have a values-based conversation about investment again in California and Californians.” Her top priority has been to repeal legislation that prohibits aid for new children born into families already receiving welfare.
“Finance tends to say, ‘This is how much money we have left – fight amongst yourselves,’ ” Mitchell said. “How about as leaders we say, ‘We want X number fewer children in California living in poverty,’ and then figure out what we need to do to make that happen.”
California’s official poverty rate, at 16 percent, exceeds the national rate of 14.9 percent. Nearly a quarter of the state’s 38 million residents are considered poor – far and away the highest proportion in the U.S. – based on the Census Bureau’s measure that accounts for factors such as cost of living.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Brown’s Department of Finance, said legally required spending on schools must be considered before restoring other programs and services, and that in some cases overall social service costs have risen due to higher caseloads during the recession. He noted that the state under Brown climbed out of a $27 billion budget hole not simply by enacting spending cuts, but also by passing sales and income tax hikes.
Brown’s administration has pointed to several steps the governor has taken to help the poor. The state’s minimum wage, now $9 a hour, is set to rise to $10 an hour next year. He also has worked through his budget to direct education funding to poor and immigrant children.
Still, key individual aid payments are lower than pre-recession levels.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/state-budget/article5390229.html