As you know, California finally has a budget for 2010-11. The good news is that the budget, while providing less money for education than last year's budget, included more money for schools than the Governor's May Revise budget proposal. That means that there is more money coming to our school district than we planned for when this year's budget was approved. When I last discussed the budget, our district's projected deficit for next year (2011-2012), excluding one-time federal money, was about $1.7 million.
The new state budget will help us minimize the deficit next year, but we will still need to look at some reductions to address the anticipated $4 million strucutural deficit that must be addressed over the next two years.
Our district's Assistant Superintendent of Fiscal Services, Pam Becker, gave a very thorough presentation on Tuesday, Oct. 12, at a special board meeting on the budget. You can view this presentation here.
The risk is that the state budget only resolved about half the state's budget problem. The Legislative Analysts Office is already projecting that California is facing an $18 billion deficit in 2011-2012. Therefore, we have to be prepared for possible mid-year budget cuts and the possibility of cuts in next year's budget.
But at least the district can breathe a bit easier for now. Thanks to everyone in the district for helping weather the storm of the past couple years. And special thanks to Pam Becker and her department for quickly analyzing what the recently passed state budget means for Berryessa schools.
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Either Whitman or Brown can balance the budget - if they are willing to tangle with the powerful correctional employee unions! Almost a billion can be cut from the prison system operating budget! Not one inmate would have to be released early! Further, most of the $6.5 billion in AB 900 prison construction bond funds could be applied to the deficit.
The savings only require a couple simple changes that have operated successfully in other States for decades. One, shifting parole to the counties would fix a broken parole revocation system, reducing prison operating costs by over $410 million annually. Under county courts, parole violation rates would return to the national average of 20%.
Two, moving technical parole violators and other minor offenders to correctional contract beds would save more billions. That is because correctional contract bed annual operational costs are $22,500 less than a standard prison bed and cost nothing for construction. California has less than 3% of its inmates in contract beds compared to over 13% in Texas and 16.5% in the Federal prison system. If California increased contract beds to 16% of capacity, about $580 million in operating costs would be saved annually. The changes would just return low level offenders serving short terms to county facilities where they belong. The State could avoid spending billions for new prison construction. The annual savings and the bulk of $6.5 billion in AB 900 prison construction bonds could be applied to the deficit. It is a waste of public money to house low risk, minor offenders in expensive prison beds.
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