Gov. Brown Announces Trigger Cuts

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Sacramento --

State spending on higher education, K-12 education, social services, public safety and other programs will be cut by about $1 billion next month because tax revenues coming into California's treasury this year will not meet expectations, Gov. Jerry Brown announced today.

But public schools can breathe a partial sigh of relief: The governor's office said K-12 education will face a $327 million cut from their budgets midyear, instead of the more than $1 billion reduction that would have occurred if revenues had been even worse. That reduction in spending will begin Feb. 1; the other cuts will take effect Jan. 1.

The automatic midyear cuts were included as part of the budget agreement in June to show Wall Street that the state was serious about balancing its budget. In the final days of budget deliberations, state leaders added an additional $4 billion in anticipated revenue assumptions; the trigger cuts were included in the event that $4 billion did not materialize.

It did not: Brown said Tuesday that California will collect about $1.8 billion instead of the $4 billion, forcing state leaders to cut planned spending for the fiscal year that will end June 30. And he warned that more spending reductions are likely to be announced next month, when he introduces a budget proposal for the 2012-13 fiscal year.

"The good news is economy of California is recovering ... but (it's) still not enough to close the deficit built up for years," Brown said. "These cuts to universities, In Home Supportive Services, schools, prosecutions - are not good, they are not the way we would like to run California, but we have to live within our means."

The revenue projection the governor is relying on is higher than what the Legislative Analyst's Office had predicted last month. The analyst's projection would have meant even deeper cuts.

Still, the University of California and California State University systems each will take a $100 million cut, community college spending will take a $102million hit, services for the developmentally disabled will be reduced by $100 million, state grants to local libraries of nearly $16 million will be wiped out and counties will face higher costs to send juvenile offenders to state custody.

And public schools will see per pupil spending slashed by $79 million instead of more than $1 billion - an amount equal to about half a day of school instead of a full week, according to Director of Finance Ana Matosantos. The state will also reduce its spending on transportation for public school kids by another $248 million.

How to make those reductions will be up to individual schools - some could choose to keep transportation funding and cut other programs.

The In-Home Supportive Services program, which provides basic services to 372,000 disabled and elderly adults in order to prevent them from being placed in nursing homes, also is targeted with a $100 million cut. That would be in the form of a 20 percent reduction in hours that recipients would receive care.

However, advocates for the program sought and won a temporary restraining order against the state to prevent the reduction.

A federal judge in Oakland found the reduction would place IHSS recipients "at imminent and serious risk of harm to their health and safety, as well as unnecessary and unwanted out-of-home placement including institutionalization."

The next hearing on the matter is tentatively scheduled for Thursday.

Even before the governor announced the size of the trigger cuts, his critics were using them to attack his leadership.

"Any cuts to education now are only because the Governor is using the cuts for political reasons and represents a total failure of Brown to reform government at any level," said Tom Del Beccaro, chairman of the California Republican Party.

These spending reductions will not be the end of the ongoing reductions in the state's budget. The legislative analyst has projected that California will face another $13 billion deficit next year and Brown himself has warned Tuesday that significant additional cuts will be necessary.

He repeated Tuesday that if voters do not approve a package of temporary tax increases he plans to put on next November's ballot, deeper cuts will take place.

"We either cut or tax, there is no third way, no alternative," he said. "And as governor of California, I am sensitive to what these cutbacks do to real people, but I am also aware over time that California has to balance its budget, that we have to exercise fiscal discipline."

Here's the list of trigger cuts agreed to by lawmakers in the governor as part of this year's budget agreement:

-- University of California: $100 million

-- California State University: $100 million

-- State grants for local libraries: $15.9 million

-- Department of Developmental Services: $100 million

-- In-Home Supportive Services: $100 million

-- Eliminate funding for local antifraud efforts in IHSS: $10 million

-- Additional Medi-Cal provider cuts and co-payments: $15 million

-- Unallocated cut to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: $20 million

-- Increase county charges for sending juvenile offenders to state custody: $72.1 million

-- Eliminate some prosecution grants: $15 million

-- Increase per-unit fees $10 for community colleges: $30 million

-- Four percent reduction in child care support: $23 million

-- Public school reduction: $79.6 million

-- Community college spending: $72 million

-- School transportation: $248 million

Chronicle staff writer Marisa Lagos contributed to this report.

E-mail Wyatt Buchanan at wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

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