Matt Drange/California Watch More than 150 state voters gathered in San Francisco on Thursday to take the California Budget Challenge.
If the room full of likely voters who gathered yesterday in San Francisco for the California Budget Challenge had their way, California's current budget deficit would be morphed into a $7.9 billion surplus.
More than 150 people participated in the interactive challenge yesterday, put on by the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Next 10. Using hand-held electronic clickers, the group voted on the same issues lawmakers are grappling with in Sacramento less than a week before the June 15 budget deadline. With a starting point of $10.5 billion* in the red, voters enacted a series of cuts and tax increases to close the gap – and then some.
More than two-thirds of the group supported an increase in income tax levels for those with an annual income of more than $300,000, while 63 percent voted in favor of raising sales taxes. In addition, more than half the group voted to restore vehicle license fees to 1997 levels, while 49 percent said they would institute annual assessments of non-residential properties that would generate an estimated $2.2 billion for the state.
While the group clearly supported tax increases that Gov. Jerry Brown says are pivotal to balancing the budget, it also expressed support for increased funding for education. More than two-thirds of the group voted to increase funding for K-12 education, while 45 percent opted to slash $400 million from community colleges, leaving students to pick up the remainder by nearly doubling fees to $62 a unit. The majority of the group, meanwhile, voted to restore the $1 billion in cuts made earlier this year to the University of California and California State University systems.
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But while support for education emerged as a priority, the group also made it clear that it did not want to continue funding a prison system budget that has grown over the last 10 years. Nearly 70 percent of the group voted to modify the state's existing "three strikes" law, with 34 percent agreeing with Brown's proposal to remand low-level inmates back to county jails and save an estimated $1.7 billion.
Other issues, meanwhile, divided the group. A little more than half opted to slash benefits to state employees, for example, while the crowd was split on the question of whether to change funding levels for programs like CalWORKs and In-Home Supportive Services. In what was perhaps the closest vote of the day, 49 percent of people said they would not support a spending cap, while 20 percent said they would.
Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California and one of three panelists at the budget challenge, said the divisions were a classic example of the difficulty in budget negotiations.
"What you saw is a perfect example of why the job of legislators is so difficult," Schnur said, describing a need for what he called "cross-pollination" – or interaction – between people in traditionally liberal areas of the state, like San Francisco, and those in more conservative ones, like Orange County.
Schnur was optimistic that legislators would be able to meet next week's budget deadline, crediting the governor with compromises achieved on both sides in an effort to bridge the gap. While the discussion yesterday was helpful to fostering a greater understanding of the budget process among those in attendance, Schnur said the real challenge would be to continue the conversation and have the group engage in compromise talks as well.
"The first step is deciding what's important to you; the next is deciding what you're willing to give up," he said of the process in Sacramento. "It looks like the legislation is marching toward that."
Some in the audience, like San Francisco residents Richard and Shirley Hansen, said that while they were pleased to be a part of the project, they did not believe the level of thought put into the decisions would be shared by most voters.
"They'll be lucky if people give 10 percent (of the effort yesterday) when they get to the voting booth," Richard Hansen said. "There's hardly anyone who truly understands this; it's tough."
Next 10 founder F. Noel Perry said that sentiment was just what he wanted to combat when he launched the project in 2003. Since then, the group has presented similar budget challenges to people across the state, reaching more than 300,000 through its interactive website tool. Perry said he continues altering the project – like he did after the May 16 budget revision – to better serve participants in the future.
"You don't solve the problem overnight," Perry said, adding that he remains optimistic that a budget that takes into account future generations will become a reality in Sacramento. "Let's keep our fingers crossed that a deal gets done and gives us a small reprieve."
*This was corrected from an amount reported in an earlier version of the story.
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