Budget Schmudget

There isn’t going to be a whole lot of reporting here on the governor’s budget proposal until it starts being dissected by the Legislature, a process that will stretch out for – just a shot in the dark – at least six months. 

The governor said in his speech he was submitting his $101 billion general fund spending blueprint to the Legislature whose responsibility is to muck with it. To put it mildly, what the solons ultimately approve won’t be the plan presented Thursday. 

So as Jerry Brown once said in an even flakier iteration, we’ll “let reality emerge.” 

Governor Schwarzenegger targets state spending as the budget villain, to use his term, a point recently and rather inartfully echoed by some smarty-pants in a more reputable publication than this one.  

(Read the screed at: www.sfgate.com. Type in Lucas and credit card in the Archive Search.) 

A few years back, a couple of legislative budgeteers tried to recast the budget subcommittee process by imposing sort of a poor man’s zero-based budgeting on whoever’s administration it was at that time. 

In other words, rather than reacting to the current levels of spending presented by various agencies and departments, the legislative budgeteers forced the state entities to define their missions and core responsibilities. Then the operating budget was built giving first dibs on the dough to those most important programs. The less important stuff got less coin. 

Kinda like roof-over-head and food-on-table trumps Wii Ninja Gaeden II. 

Of course, the process required a lot of damn work and was  quickly abandoned.  

Let reality emerge!