California ceases disability payments.

[SirNitram]

Link

California's fiscal future lurched yet another step toward oblivion on Friday as state Controller John Chiang announced he could no longer make payments for services to disabled and blind people who need the money to pay for rent and food.

Chiang said payments would most likely have to be stopped by Feb. 1.

"Delaying these payments will hurt real families," Chiang said.

About one million people would be affected by the non-payments, Chiang said.

"People are going to be hungry at my house," said Shirley Magers, who receives a $900 monthly payment related to her disabilities. "(This is) not to mention the utilities. Personally I can't pay all the utilities right now."

Education will be spared from the delayed payments, but California's money meltdown has been long in the making.

"The last day the state had a positive cash balance was July 12, 2007 -- a year and a half ago," Chiang said.

Since that time, California has been using internal borrowing to pay the bills. Barring a quick deal at the capitol, taxpayers will likely receive IOUs instead of tax refunds this spring.

Lawmakers have about two weeks to strike a deal with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or the cash crisis will expand to even more people.

Thousands of construction projects around the state are shutting down because state bond money has dried up.

"If it continues for a number of months into next year, it could be 200,000 jobs lost," said State Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

The board that oversees those projects voted to free up funding on Friday while top legislative leaders joined Schwarzenegger for another round of budget talks.

Schwarzenegger said he may host another meeting of top legislative leaders on Saturday.

IIRC, the most recent cuts proposed by Schwarzenegger specifically include cutting payments to those receiving money due to disability through SSI. Thank you, whatever dipshit decided to allow propositions on taxes and funding. Oh well. We always knew when capitalism suffers a major breakdown, the weakest suffer.

[Broomstick]

That is just horrifying.

People look at my Other Half and say "Why isn't he on disability? Apply for disability!" Uh, yeah... So far this is just California, yes?

::: shudders, wondering how much longer we will have our state-subsidized health care :::

[Alyeska]

Thank god for Governor Schweitzer. He balanced our budget last year and got us a surplus. This year it looks like Montana's budget might be close enough that they don't quite get enough. Had Schweitzer not done such a good job balancing things and getting us a nice little surplus, we would be absolutely screwed right now. I believe that when people track the states with budget troubles, Montana is one state that is never listed. We are doing fairly well for ourselves. And a good chunk of our economy has to do with base living. Retail economies suffer in a recession. But everyone still has to eat and so our agriculture is doing just fine. I truly feel sorry for what California is going through right now. I expect to see significant tax protest arise from this.

[Darth Raptor]

Isn't the whole point of a federation to prevent exactly this kind of thing? So what, we just tell Californians to get fucked?

[Alyeska]

Yeah, the US isn't a Federation. California can petition for assistance, but where is it going to come from? Almost every state has a budget shortfall and the Federal Government is already running deep into the red with some of the bailouts they are doing.

[SirNitram]

And on the other end of the spectrum in California..

Link

Reporting from Sacramento -- As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger orders steep salary cuts for most of the state workforce, some Sacramento players are doing much better by him.

The governor has added state legislators and former political aides to the state payroll, with six-figure salaries. Their positions: plum posts on the same state boards and commissions that the governor crusaded to abolish a few years ago, calling them a waste of taxpayer money.

Two GOP lawmakers who recently left office and have limited expertise in thorny employment issues have received jobs at the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. The panel met 12 times last year, and members are paid $128,109.

"It's a soft landing spot for ex-elected officials who can make a good living while showing up 12 times a year," said Joel Fox, an antitax advocate who worked on the governor's aborted plan to shut down the boards. "The positions should be eliminated."

Seats on state boards have long been awarded to lawmakers loyal to governors and legislative leaders.

But Schwarzenegger made the most recent appointments just days after ordering 238,000 state workers to be furloughed two days a month or take an equivalent pay cut of about 9%. He also requested that the state payroll be reduced an additional 10%, including layoffs if necessary.

"People were very disgusted and upset about it," said Sandie Luke, president of a Northern California council for the Service Employees International Union, Local 1000. The local represents 95,000 white-collar workers.

She faulted the governor and his staff, saying: "It makes you wonder what their priorities are."

Administration spokeswoman Rachel Cameron said lawmakers balked at abolishing the boards and folding their operations into other agencies, so the governor is left with no choice but to fill vacant seats. And she said the handling of unemployment appeals is more crucial than ever because of the sour economy.

"The governor still has an obligation to continue to appoint the best qualified people to carry out this function," she said.

The two posts went to Bonnie Garcia of Cathedral City and George Plescia of La Jolla. Schwarzenegger's office announced the appointments on New Year's Eve.

A few weeks earlier Schwarzenegger had appointed state Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) to a $132,000 seat on a board that meets once a month to oversee trash disposal in the state. Migden lost her reelection bid and had to leave the Legislature at the end of November.

The governor made the appointment even though he has twice recommended eliminating the trash board, most recently in his budget proposal for the next fiscal year, now pending before the Legislature. Still, his former scheduling director chairs the board, and two other former Democratic lawmakers were added to its payroll by legislative leaders late last year.

Another panel, the state Personnel Board, includes onetime Schwarzenegger aides appointed earlier: Patricia Clarey, his former chief of staff, and Richard Costigan, former deputy chief of staff.

The governor believes Garcia and Plescia are appropriate to their new positions, Cameron said. "They are both great public servants with a desire to continue serving the people of California in this new role," she said.

Garcia once served as vice chairwoman of the Assembly Committee on Jobs and Economic Development, and she noted she has a college degree in workforce development.

Plescia, who did not return calls for comment, does not list in the resume he submitted to the governor's office any previous work involving unemployment insurance or employment issues.

Migden was appointed to the waste board, Cameron said, on the recommendation of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), "because she has held several elected positions throughout local and state government for nearly 20 years and her background will serve well in this new role."

And Migden defended her own qualifications. "Throughout my career in public service, I've looked for ways to solve problems," she said.

In 2005, as part of his California Performance Review process, Schwarzenegger proposed eliminating 88 state boards and commissions, including those to which he has now appointed Garcia, Plescia and Migden.

"No one paid by the state should make $100,000 a year for only meeting twice a month," he told legislators then.

But in the face of widespread opposition from legislators and special interests, he dropped the idea.

"I didn't want to stop all the other things I wanted to get done," he explained later.

Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) introduced legislation recently that would abolish the waste board, calling it "a blatant rip-off of taxpayer dollars to the tune of $2 million a year," a reference to the board's cost.

"This type of wasteful spending can no longer be tolerated in the face of massive and ever-increasing budget deficits," Denham said.

Democrats, too, are giving the California Performance Review Report a second look in a new Assembly committee created to find waste and ways to be more efficient.

Meanwhile, the $132,000 in annual salary that Migden will collect would be enough to cover 1,109 additional children in the state's Healthy Families program, which provides medical, dental and vision coverage to poor children and faces possible cutbacks because of the fiscal crisis. Her pay would also cover a cost-of-living increase for 523 families receiving state welfare grants.

But Cameron noted that Migden and the other board appointees are subject to the same 10% salary cuts as mostother state employees. Plescia and Garcia's pay could eventually be cut to $115,298, while Migden's could drop to $118,000.

Nancy Swindell, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees 2620, which represents pharmacists, dietitians, psychologists and social workers employed by the state, said that is small comfort to the average state employee

When Schwarzenegger "gives an outlandish salary to Bonnie Garcia and then cuts the salary for a state worker making just above minimum wage, where is the impact?" Swindell said. "It sends the message that the governor supports the elite and has no sympathy or empathy for the working person."

And even less for those who're disabled.

[JME2]

Great; this could potentially fuck over one of my uncles...

[MKSheppard]

I wonder now if people will simply send in "IOU" notes to the CA Revenue Income office (or whatever the taxman is named there) come april...

[aerius]

My guess is the state of California's trying to hardball the US government for bailouts. Either way this goes, it's gonna get real ugly.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Disgusting. The richest state in the US, and they can't even look after those in most need.

If any single example were needed to show the system is broken, this is it.

[Crayz9000]

I wonder now if people will simply send in "IOU" notes to the CA Revenue Income office (or whatever the taxman is named there) come april...

It's actually the other way around, the CA Franchise Tax Board is likely to issue IOUs instead of rebate checks this year.

Not that I'm going to miss it much from them, usually my state rebate has been to the tune of ~$100, but it's going to leave some people seriously hurting.

[MKSheppard]

It's actually the other way around, the CA Franchise Tax Board is likely to issue IOUs instead of rebate checks this year.

That's what I mean! If he's going to send you IOUs for rebate checks; send him an IOU for payment.

[Admiral Valdemar]

And too fucking right. If the state of CA is going to screw people over this way after such insane expenditure bills, then the people can play the game too. Although they'll have the fun of going to prison for the effort. That, and I hear most of the problems from the state's budget stem from people voting in stupid bills they can ill-afford.

[Samuel]

And too fucking right. If the state of CA is going to screw people over this way after such insane expenditure bills, then the people can play the game too. Although they'll have the fun of going to prison for the effort. That, and I hear most of the problems from the state's budget stem from people voting in stupid bills they can ill-afford.

We ran out of prison space actually.

The problem isn't just the spending- the tax caps are the main problem.

[Medic]

Yet more hilarity out of the once-golden state of California.

I swear, 1st chance I get, I'm changing my home of record. Residing in Army billeting and single, I can't do it yet but I might as well for the tax benefits and the fact I already own a California-illegal firearm. There's not much left for me back home except family, and I'm content to just visit them.

[Beowulf]

Brungie: you know you don't actually need to pay CA income tax, right? You just send in a non-resident tax form every year with $0 as your taxable income to the Franchise Tax Board. (I've also adjusted my withholding to 0, so I not going to end up shafted by the IOUs).

[CaptainChewbacca]

Not only that, they're starting to pay teachers in IOU's as well.

[starslayer]

Although this is utterly ridiculous in the extreme, as has been covered, there isn't much that can be done to fix it besides raising taxes a lot (mostly on the rich, of course). If we're going to spend a couple hundred billion a year, we'd better get that money from taxes, not loans that we can't pay back and now simply can't get. Just to give you an idea of how monstrous this deficit is for California, if we were to shutter every single public school in the state from K-12 for a year, that would net a savings of about $39 billion, less than our shortfall. Laying off all state employees without severance or pension saves about $7 billion a year.

[Guardsman Bass]

California has a shitty bond rating relative to the rest of the states, although they usually manage to get loans somehow.

As is, I wonder if this will create more impetus for a state constitutional convention. Or that idea for a proposition that would immediately force all elected officials in the state government (to be more specific, the state congress and Governor) out of office if they didn't pass a budget by the budget deadline (and ban them from running for state office for two years).

[Master of Ossus]

Although this is utterly ridiculous in the extreme, as has been covered, there isn't much that can be done to fix it besides raising taxes a lot (mostly on the rich, of course). If we're going to spend a couple hundred billion a year, we'd better get that money from taxes, not loans that we can't pay back and now simply can't get. Just to give you an idea of how monstrous this deficit is for California, if we were to shutter every single public school in the state from K-12 for a year, that would net a savings of about $39 billion, less than our shortfall. Laying off all state employees without severance or pension saves about $7 billion a year.

Californians already bear the 6th highest tax burden of any state in the Union. Raising taxes is always the easy solution when there's a big budget shortfall, but the state has to realistically recognize that it can't continue spending at such high levels indefinitely. We have to look for long-term cutbacks.