LA Times: Schwarzenegger's legacy of promises squandered

[marmar]

Schwarzenegger's legacy of promises squandered
Cutting the vehicle license fee and borrowing $15 billion early in his tenure as governor helped force the state into the budget box it's in today.

By George Skelton
Capitol Journal
May 16, 2010


From Sacramento


Pretty pathetic, all of it: The bleeding state government, the weakened Legislature, the lame duck governor.

The governor especially. Promise unfulfilled. Opportunity squandered.

It's the choices one makes in the early years — in life and in a governor's office — that usually determine one's fate. Options narrow. The path can become one-way.

For Arnold Schwarzenegger, two very early decisions as governor helped force him into the budget box he found himself in Friday, where the only moves he dared make were, he said, personally painful. Those two fateful moves were:

First, cutting the vehicle license fee, or "car tax." Ironically for Schwarzenegger, it counted as a spending increase, costing roughly $5 billion annually. That's because local governments, not the state, had banked the VLF revenue, and Sacramento graciously reimbursed them for their loss. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap-20100517,0,5272488.column

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. CA is soooo messed up I am not sure either Schwarzenegger or Davis could have prevented

things from going off track. The public pension underfunding is the big one. Not sure how it will impact with Prop 4 hanging over our heads too.