Response to California Budget

by Devan Conroy


According to article that we read in Governing California, many important issues quickly caught my attention. California spent ninety billion dollars in 2005-2006, according to the Legislative Analysts Office. Money was spread all around the state, but the five largest categories receiving money were the K-12 education, higher education, health, social services and criminal justice. Everyone in the class is aware that I am fairly conservative and I am an avid supporter of police officers. Although I like the police officers, I would have to say that K-12 education ranks among the most important in the budgeting process. I would love to choose police officers as the most important and deserving group to receive funds from the government, unfortunately without K-12 education, police officers would have too high of a crime rate to control. K-12 education promotes lower crime rates, better informed students and might even motivate the troubled children to succeed in life. I believe that health and education are hard to cut funding for, but criminal justice and higher education would be the areas that I would attempt to reform. I feel that the criminal justice system could afford to get rid of the three strikes system, as well as legalize marijuana. I feel that with the three strikes rule no longer in effect, and measly arrests for being in possession of marijuana could relieve crowding in the jails and prisons. With the prison system being less crowded, the government could potentially save money for not having to care for the petty criminals. Also, if the state rose citation amounts on possession of marijuana, and drunk driving, the state could collect money from the lawbreaker and not have to pay for his incarceration. As far as higher education goes, people should have to pay more for tuition and more in taxes if they wished to be well educated. I understand that many people cannot afford college as expensive as it is today, but the budget could save billions of dollars if the school taxed their students or if the school began charging more for tuition. These changes would not have to be permanent; they would just have to exist until the state is no longer in debt.

California, has a partisan government, which is extremely unproductive to the budget and initiative processes. The people who are elected to office are often pushed into voting strictly to their parties beliefs. Elected officials often refuse to relinquish the party beliefs and ideologies. If the elected officials were elected to office based on their own personal ideologies and beliefs, then perhaps more movement would occur in the government and budget process. The people in office that have “No Strings Attached”, would have the freedom to vote the way they wish to, without having to face the consequences from their party for voting the wrong way. The article talked about the time it took for a budget to be passed in California, including the eight to nine stages of checks between the assembly/senate and the governor and his analytical assistant.

I found the readings to be very insightful, but I also read about many flaws in the budget process. It feels like the government needs to abolish partisan officials and stick to people who do not vote based on the party affiliations. We as people should vote for and be represented by a real person with political beliefs, not a droid that always votes for the party it belongs to. When I vote people in office I do not vote them in office based on their party, I vote them in because of their ideologies and ideas to fix the state in for the greater good. California should set the example on the national scale, showing that politicians have their own specific thoughts and ideas. We the people, elect these officials based on their own ideas and how they plan to use their ideas to better our province, city, county or state.