The staggering new numbers provide further proof that Band-Aid approaches -- be they "temporary" tax cuts or marginal spending reductions -- are insufficient to address the scale of California's dysfunction. Root and branch reform is necessary. And it will have to be undertaken soon, before the math becomes so daunting as to leave the state irretrievably consigned to decline.Gov. Jerry Brown of California announced when he came into office last year that he had found an alarming $28 billion "wall of debt" looming over the state, which had to be dismantled...
On Thursday, an independent group of fiscal experts said Mr. Brown's efforts were all well and good, but in fact, the "wall of debt" was several times as big as the governor thought.
Directors of the State Budget Crisis Task Force said their researchers had found a lot of other debts that did not turn up in California's official tally. Much of it involved irrevocable promises to provide pensions to public workers, health care for retirees, the cost of delayed highway maintenance and an estimated $40 billion bill to bring drinking water up to federal standards.
They also pointed out many of the same unpaid bills from previous years that the governor had brought to light, like $8 billion in delayed payments to schools and community colleges, and $250 million that was raided from a fund dedicated to transportation and treated as revenue.
The task force estimated that the burden of debt totaled at least $167 billion and as much as $335 billion...
California's debt woes exponentially larger than previously reported
As the November election nears in California, Governor Jerry Brown is attempting to sell his proposed increase in state sales and income taxes as the responsible route out from under California's crushing debt burden. Leaving aside the negative impacts that higher taxes would have on the Golden State's economy, however, Brown is still left with a major problem: As a new report from the State Budget Crisis Task Force reveals, more thorough estimates of the state's actual indebtedness climb as high as 11 times more than Brown's original figures.
From the New York Times:
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