The California Report's Sacramento Bureau chief, John Myers, spoke to a source close to the budget negotiations today who outlined some of the most notable elements of the long-awaited budget deal. Some highlights from his post:
Spending Reductions: $7.5 billion. While we've been hearing that number for a while, a few of the details seem to show that the savings are less in reducing programs and more in ways that essentially find the money in places outside of the deficit-plagued general fund....
(For example) of the $300 million cut in In Home Support Services, only about $35 million is reportedly an actual program reduction... which, according to the information provided today, translates into a caregiver's eight hour workday being trimmed by 15 minutes...
The big kahuna in the spending reductions is school funding; about $3 billion of the $7.5 billion is reportedly from schools. But here again, it seems as though it could have been worse. The deal defers more mandated spending into the 2011-12 fiscal year, and will proclaim to leave per pupil funding at its current levels once deferrals, repayment of money owed, and actual current year spending is all accounted for.
State Workers: $1.4 billion: This may be the most politically touchy of the solutions in the budget deal, as $896 million of the state employee savings reportedly hinges on the ongoing bargaining between Schwarzenegger and unions. Those talks have been supposedly up and down, and it's unclear what happens if the budget comes up for a vote... and there's still no deal.
Read the details here.