COVERITLIVE.COM

11:59

Chris Reed - I'm here and ready to go.

12:00

[Comment From Kevin]
Hi Chris, my question is... besides your column, where can we get good info?

12:01

Chris Reed -

The Legislative Analyst's Office web site is great.

12:01

Chris Reed - http://www.lao.ca.gov/sections/econ_fiscal/Historical_Expenditures_Pivot.xls

12:01

Chris Reed - is an interactive budget tool that is easy to use.

12:02

Chris Reed -

I'll kick off with this observation: The Prop. 13 is the devil thesis falls apart when one contemplates the numbers. From 1980-81 to 2006-07, California's overall tax revenue went up 555 percent. This is a readily document fact on the LAO web site. That is far, far, far faster than the combined rate of population growth and inflation. For you or anyone to argue that inadequate revenue is a long-term problem created by Prop. 13 is just baffling. Sure, 13 is responsible for huge inequities helping those who have had property for long periods. But revenue has exploded even with these inequites. Period.

12:04

SignOnLiveChatModerator -

Chris, if Prop. 13 is not the devil, where do you place the blame for the current budget crisis?

12:06

Chris Reed - Well, the main cause is the huge plunge in revenue because of the deep recession. But even before the recession, we had a budget nightmare, with spending going up much faster than inflation and population growth. And, no, it wasn't always spending "the public wanted."

12:06

[Comment From Kevin]
Why do media (LAT, Bee, TV, etc.....) hide such information. Truly, what's in it for them? Just churning emotions to sell papers?

12:07

Chris Reed - I think there is a mind-set among the edit boards and many of the reporters at the LAT and the Sac Bee that is amazingly hospitable to a conventional wisdom that really does think the problem is the obstacles to raising taxes, not the state's inability to live within its means.

12:08

Chris Reed - And so this conventional wisdom is reflected in articles that often amount to advocacy to try to push the public into doing "what's right" -- that is, raising taxes.

And so inconvenient facts are discarded.

12:09

Chris Reed - But even that maybe too generous and not damning enough of the media establishment. For years, the Sacto set has reserved its highest praise for budgets that pass on time or near the July 1 deadline.

Think about how vapid and intellectually shallow that is. Valuing when a budget is passed over its actual contents.

12:10

[Comment From Kevin]
Yes, and that can be the basis for an open, honest discussion. Why the lies, tricky initiatives, and just plain hiding of objective facts?

12:11

Chris Reed - I don't want to go too far here. There are establishment journos who I think are not part of the conventional wisdom narrative. Dan Walters, in September 2006, legendarily annihilated the narrative that Arnold was a post-partisan genius who had figured out how to run the state. He called Arnold's accomplishments "low-hanging fruit." Exactly.

12:13

Chris Reed - But you are right. There are some objective facts that simply don't get mentioned. During last year's brutal budget battle, it was barely reported that spending actually went up by $100 million. Instead, we were told over and over again that there were huge cuts. But the cuts were in wish-list projected spending increases. This isn't true, accurate or helpful, and it's not how budget deficits are described in other states.

12:14

[Comment From Smitty]
It doesn't help when all the newspapers in a region are owned by the same company, as is the case in the Bay Area.

12:15

Chris Reed - That's a good point. You don't see a variety of opinions. It's pretty amazing that in a state this big, there's not a widely distributed columnist who is a fiscal conservative.

12:15

Chris Reed - And I would like to volunteer!

12:16

[Comment From Smitty]
We have, basically, two sources of news coming out of all the papers here.

12:18

Chris Reed - The problem may be even worse than that. AP is the only agency covering many, many big Sacramento stories, and its reporter offers the most surface accounting of complex issues imaginable. AP is supposed to be meat-and-potatoes, but it never gives the budget basics in its stories. To read their coverage, you'd think Arnold really is about to cut $24 billion from this year's budget. Not.

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