The 2012-13 Budget: Overview of the Governor's Budget

The Governor’s proposed tax initiative is the cornerstone of his 2012-13 budget plan, which includes proposals to restructure education finance, reduce social services and child care programs substantially, and implement trigger cuts--primarily affecting schools--if voters do not approve the tax measure. The Governor’s plan would continue the difficult task of restoring the state budget to balance, but the difficulty in knowing how much taxable income will be attributable to high-income Californians makes the state’s revenue estimates an even bigger question mark than usual. With regard to the Governor’s major proposals, we think the Governor’s education restructuring proposals would institute lasting improvements to the system, and we observe that, while his social services and child care proposals have merit, they involve considerable drawbacks as well, given potentially severe impacts on affected families. Moreover, while the Governor’s tax initiative would improve the financial outlook of public education over the next several years, his trigger plan would create significant uncertainty for educational institutions in their planning for 2012-13. The Legislature needs to be very deliberate in structuring a workable trigger package and designing tools to help schools respond to potential trigger cuts. 

via LAO

Program gives college students a break on out-of-state tuition

While her classmates agonize over which college to attend, high school senior Samantha Morgan is passing up offers from Cal State campuses in Long Beach and San Jose. She is heading out of California to avoid overcrowded classes and other state budget problems.

And she can afford it thanks to a little-known program that offers discounts at public colleges and universities to students from 15 states, most of them in the West.

Morgan is taking advantage of the Western Undergraduate Exchange to enroll at Northern Arizona University this fall. Under the interstate agreement, she will pay $12,700 a year in tuition, compared with $20,800 for other out-of-staters at the Flagstaff campus. Her bill will be double California State University's nearly $6,000 a year, but she wants to graduate in four years and avoid delays that budget cuts are causing at California public universities.

"It definitely made a difference in where I was going to go," said Morgan, who attends Millikan High School in Long Beach. "It just made the decision easier."

She is part of a growing, although still relatively small, cadre of students in the program, which sets tuition at no more than 150% of in-state rates and saves undergraduates on average $7,700 a year. The arrangement is possible because, even in these tough economic times, some campuses in other states have more space at their universities and are happy to take in neighbors at less than full freight. In all, 150 public colleges — some two-year, some four-year — take part; only 10 are in California.

Last fall, 29,077 students took advantage of the tuition discount, up from about 22,100 four years before, in states from Alaska and Hawaii to North Dakota and New Mexico. The number of Californians has more than doubled in that time to 9,717 and now is 10 times larger than the number of residents of the other 14 states who come to California.

California "is a huge winner" in the program because it exports so many more young people than it receives, said Margo Colalancia, director of student exchanges at the nonprofit Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder, Co., which runs the program. "This is a real relief valve for the state now."

For Californians, the most popular destinations are Northern Arizona University, the University of Nevada at Reno, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Southern Oregon University and New Mexico State University. In California, 10 of the 23 Cal States have joined, with the Humboldt and Chico campuses attracting the most out-of-staters. University of California doesn't participate, no surprise since it has been pushing to add non-resident students who pay $23,000 a year more than California residents.

Such an exodus is not an answer to all the pressures facing public higher education in California, but this program and similar regional swaps in other parts of the country provide a benefit, according to Jerome A. Lucido, executive director of the USC Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice.

"It is a valuable model at a time when some states like California are short on room at public campuses but have a lot of students, while other states have room and not enough students. In some ways it helps the nation educate more people and potentially at a lower cost," he said.

Some campuses limit the number of lower-paying students they accept, treating it as a scholarship for top students from other states. Some allow these students into only certain majors and departments. (The University of Arizona in Tucson, for example, opens up only mining engineering.) Some research-oriented campuses, such as the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Washington, haven't joined because, like UC, they already attract full-fare non-residents.

The program began in 1988; initially, Cal State's California Maritime Academy was the only school in the state to take part. As a result, about half the other states did not accept Californians. That changed after 2006, when other Cal States decided to join.

Cal State East Bay, for example, at first had plenty of room and liked the geographic diversity of the exchange students. Now in tighter economic times, the school still wants to stay in the program, which brings 67 out-of-staters to the Hayward campus, in part to help keep reciprocity alive for Californians who travel beyond the borders. "We see this as being a good citizen of California," said Greg Smith, a campus enrollment administrator.

Colalancia acknowledged that the Western Undergraduate Exchange remains somewhat unknown to many high school counselors and families. Its small staff has modest funds for marketing, which are shared with separate programs for graduate and health professional education, she said. Still, more efforts are in the works for staff to attend college fairs and to launch a social media campaign. A selling point is that students receive the discount regardless of family income.

"It's a great secret that a lot of people don't know about," said Becky Marchant, a counselor at Brea Olinda High school in Brea who is talking it up with her students. Marchant's own daughter turned down San Francisco State, fearing overcrowding there, and is part of the program as a freshman at Northern Arizona. Marchant and other counselors say they expect more Californians will participate if state budget problems make it harder for students to graduate in a timely fashion at UC, Cal State and community colleges here.

The only downside, Marchant said, is that California "is losing some great kids to out of state, and maybe a lot will come back after they graduate, but some will stay."

Recruiters for Southern Oregon University tell California students that they will have no trouble getting classes, unlike in UC and Cal State schools, said Jonathan Chavez Baez, an admission counselor. "Those are great institutions and are having difficult times. And we are not having those at our campus," he said.

This year, 629 Californians were enrolled there in the exchange, about 10% of the student body at the Ashland campus, officials said. The tuition under the program is about $10,000, half the usual out-of-state tuition, and is offered as a scholarship based on grades and test scores.

Northern Arizona University enrolls 2,147 Californians in the program, about 12% of its student body, and attracts them with its relative proximity, mountain setting and an additional promise that whatever tuition freshmen pay will not rise over their four years.

Jane Kuhn, Northern Arizona University's associate vice president for enrollment management and student affairs, said the campus receives benefits beyond the extra revenue. Out-of-staters also "add to the diversity of the student population and often have a positive impact on the overall quality of the student population," she said.

Headed to Northern Arizona is Chris Messina, a senior at Brea Olinda who wants to study political science or communications with the dream of becoming an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Not only does the tuition discount cut costs, he said, it also "gives students the idea that there is more out there than just California."

By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times April 22, 2012, 5:12 p.m.

Blacks in South L.A. have a bleaker jobs picture than in 1992

Median income in South Los Angeles is lower now than during the 1992 riots, and the unemployment rate has reached even more dire levels.

 

People line up at a job fair at the Crenshaw Christian Center in South Los Angeles last August. Yolanda White, center, was a former L.A. Unified teacher and had been looking for work for more than a year.

 

Two decades after the L.A. riots brought pledges of help to rebuild South Los Angeles, the area is worse off in many ways than it was in 1992.

Median income, when adjusted for inflation, is lower. Many middle-class blacks have fled in search of safer neighborhoods and better schools.

And the unemployment rate, which was bad at the time of the riots, has reached even more dire levels. In two areas of South Los Angeles — Florence Graham and Westmont — unemployment is almost 24%. Back in 1992, it was 21% in Florence Graham and 17% in Westmont.

Last summer, thousands of South Los Angeles residents showed up to a job fair that brought out almost 200 employers at Crenshaw Christian Center on Vermont Avenue. The event, organized by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), was seen by some as grandstanding.

"People were really skeptical," said Kokayi Kwa Jitahidi, a community organizer with the nonprofit Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. "People thought, 'Another job fair?'"

There have been training and other job programs — both privately and government-funded — in the roughly 51-square-mile area in the last two decades. A post-riots report said the area needed an investment of about $6 billion and the creation of 75,000 to 94,000 jobs.

The federal and state governments spent as much as $768 million, according to a 1994 estimate, but the main aim of Rebuild L.A. — the group leading the revitalization effort — was to steer the private sector to create jobs in the area.

Toyota, Pioneer Electronics and IBM were among the corporations that held seminars and classes.

The training center started by Toyota, in conjunction with the Los Angeles Urban League, was one of the few that succeeded in the decade after the riots. It's now closed, but it produced about 1,000 graduates trained in entry-level automotive skills.

Most of the private-sector programs, however, had little effect.

"There are many things the private sector does well, but investment in depressed areas is not often one of them," said Chris Tilly, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. "The nature of private-sector investors is to look where the payoff is. If you've got large swaths of the city where there are bad schools, poor people and crime, that's not where private investment will go."

During the 1970s and '80s, many South Los Angeles residents were able to make a middle-class living working in manufacturing and aerospace. But those jobs disappeared when those employers closed up shop, resulting in mass layoffs.

Labor activists and residents said that when jobs now become available in the area, they often don't pay living wages.

The situation "is worse today," said the Rev. Richard Byrd of Krst Unity Center of Afrakan Spiritual Science, near Western and Florence avenues. "From the standpoint of where we ought to be today, we've failed to make any progress."

At the time of the riots, South L.A. was almost 50% African American. Many with the means to leave have since moved to areas such as the Inland Empire and Lancaster and Palmdale in the Antelope Valley.

Now South Los Angeles is 30% African American, according to U.S. Census data, and black-owned businesses that once had a stronghold in the area have declined steadily.

Meanwhile, Latinos attracted by affordable housing have settled in the area and now make up about 64% of the population. Latino-owned businesses have cropped up along the main corridors. Mexican grocery stores are thriving. Immigrants flock to money-wiring outlets to send funds to relatives in Mexico and Central America. Spanish has become the language most commonly heard in the streets of South Los Angeles.

The demographic shift has made it even more difficult for African Americans to find good jobs, said Vernon M. Briggs Jr., a Cornell University labor economist who has studied the effect of immigration on blacks for more than three decades.

Latino immigrants, he said, tend to form tight-knit job networks. "What employers learn to do, if they find workers they're content with, they ask those workers to bring any relatives or friends and become more dependent on them."

Michael Richardson, assistant manager of We Build, a pre-apprenticeship construction training program run by the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that's been the case in South Los Angeles.

"We have to have that same mentality that we have to look out for each other," said Richardson, who is African American.

Other economists say that residents of South L.A. are also stigmatized simply because they live in the area, which still suffers from the perception that residents are not highly educated, even though progress in that area has been made.

It's unlikely that the area will see much improvement any time soon, UCLA's Tilly said.

What's lacking, he said, is "muscular public investment" in education. And, he said, the economic recovery needs to get stronger.

"Those folks are most likely to advance when there's strong economic growth and a strong public-sector investment," he said. "I don't want to say there's no hope, but I will say that aspect of the national political environment makes me pessimistic at the moment."

via: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/28/business/la-fi-black-unemployment-20120428

California employers add 18,200 jobs in March

State employers add jobs for the eighth straight month, but the unemployment rate rises slightly to 11% as more idled workers start job hunting again. 

California's labor market continued its slow improvement in March as employers added jobs for the eighth straight month.

Payrolls grew by 18,200 jobs last month, according to figures released Friday by the California Employment Development Department. That's on top of a revised gain of 38,600 jobs in February.

via LA Times

Tobacco brands target black youth, study finds

Tobacco marketing is targeting California's low-income and African American youth, according to researchers who examined advertising throughout the state. 

Academic researchers funded by the state's Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program found that there was greater visibility of menthol cigarette advertising at retailers near high schools where there are larger African American student populations. 

According to the most recent statistics issued by the Federal Trade Commission, the tobacco industry spent $10 billion on marketing in 2008. 

"There is a systematic targeting (of disadvantaged communities) by the tobacco industry, which is an extraordinary public health problem," said Lisa Henriksen of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, who presented the research at a legislative briefing in Sacramento last week. "The addition of menthol to cigarettes makes it easier to smoke and more difficult to quit."

Henriksen's research, published last year, found that as the proportion of black students increased at a California high school, so did the share of both menthol-related advertising and Newport brand promotions at nearby retailers.

 The study looked at all cigarette advertising, but specifically analyzed promotions and price discounts for Newport and Marlboro, two of the most popular brands with underage smokers, researchers said.

The University of Michigan's Robert Lipton also presented research at the briefing showing that in the Los Angeles area, communities that tended to be dense, poor and minority had greater rates of underage tobacco sales. 

Henriksen's ongoing study of menthol cigarette marketing has found that African American students were better able to recognize a Newport ad than teens of other races. Regardless of race, however, nonsmoking students who were familiar with the Newport ad were 49 percent more likely to start using tobacco than nonsmoking students who weren't. 

And according to a recent analysis of California K-12 schools conducted by Henriksen, tobacco retailers were within 600 feet of 24 percent of school campuses; 38 percent of schools were within 1,000 feet of a place where cigarettes were sold. Stores near California high schools featured an average of 25 cigarette ads, Henriksen said at the briefing. 

"We're really talking about a horrendous burden on low-income and communities of color, where tobacco retailers are more highly concentrated," Henriksen said. "The kinds of stores in those communities contain more ads for cigarettes, and they also have more underage sales violations." 

A spokesman for Philip Morris' parent company, Altria Group, which manufactures Marlboro cigarettes, said in a statement that the company is "committed to responsibly marketing its cigarettes to adult smokers." 

"Kids should not smoke any cigarettes, menthol or non-menthol," Altria spokesman David Sutton wrote in an e-mail. "Based on our review of the limited literature and data available, menthol cigarettes do not appear to have a unique role in smoking initiation." 

Lorillard, the makers of Newport cigarettes, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Although California has the second-lowest smoking rate in the country at about 12 percent, tobacco use among African Americans in the state is between 3 and 6 percent higher than the statewide average, according to the California Department of Public Health. 

Carol McGruder, co-chairwoman of the Oakland-based African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, said advertising aimed at black youth is one reason smoking rates remain high. Henriksen's research "validates what we knew, which is that the tobacco industry is targeting our community," McGruder said. 

Eliminating disparities and minimizing youth exposure to tobacco advertising are among the goals of the state Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which advises the California Tobacco Control Program, said Dr. Michael Ong, an assistant professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA who chairs the committee. 

Ong said locating tobacco retailers near schools is not good public health policy. "In terms of trying to reduce harms from tobacco use in California, we do need to try to further restrict easy access to tobacco, particularly from our youth," he said. 

Last week's briefing on tobacco advertising and menthol cigarettes comes at a time when policy issues are being considered at the national and state level. 

The Food and Drug Administration is considering a ban on menthol additives to cigarettes. In June, California voters will consider Proposition 29, a ballot initiative that would impose a $1-per-pack tax on cigarettes. A portion would go to research on tobacco, and the state Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee has endorsed the bill. 

Cigarette makers like Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds oppose the ballot initiative and have started a campaign committee called Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending, which argues that the state "can't afford to start a new billion-dollar spending program when we have a $10+ billion budget deficit and can't pay for critically-needed existing programs like education and health care."

California Watch 

By Bernice Yeung

Cost of public retiree health care soars in California

SACRAMENTO (AP) -- As Stockton contemplates a bankruptcy filing, cities, counties and school districts throughout California are grappling with the same issue that has led the delta port city to the brink of insolvency -- soaring costs for retiree health care.

 

San Francisco, which once allowed its public employees to qualify for full retiree medical benefits after working just five years, is projected to pay $153 million in retiree health care costs this year, about 5 percent of the city's general fund.

The Ventura County city of Thousand Oaks capped its contributions for retiree health care at $435 a month but still faces a $12.6 million unfunded liability for the perk, an amount equal to about 18 percent of the city's general fund budget.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest school district, promises 100 percent lifetime health benefits to retirees, their spouses and dependents. It now faces $10.3 billion in long-term unfunded liabilities for the benefit, 1 1/2 times the district's annual budget.

And at the state level, retiree health care costs have ballooned from $560 million annually a decade ago to a projected $1.7 billion in the coming fiscal year, almost 2 percent of general fund spending.

The benefits' costs are expected to double for the state and local governments over the next 10 years.

"The problem with (retiree medical benefits) is that these promises were made back when insurance for medical cost $200 a month, and those costs have now quintupled. And nobody even put away a nickel," said Girard Miller, a public finance consultant based in Southern California who has testified about retirement funding before state panels.

The looming crisis in providing health care for government retirees is similar to the one involving public employee pensions. The difference is that the state, counties, cities and other entities have been pre-funding pension obligations, even though the benefits promised in most cases far outstrip the pool of money available to pay them.

Retiree health care has largely been handled on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning the state and municipalities pay whatever bills come due each year. In each case, taxpayers are on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in unfunded obligations.

Both types of retirement benefits -- guaranteed pensions for life and family health care coverage after retirement -- are increasingly rare in the private sector.

In 2007, the year the recession began, Credit Suisse estimated that states and local governments nationwide were carrying $1.5 trillion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health care costs.

It's hard to know exactly how much California cities, counties and school districts owe. Governments have had to report their long-term liabilities since 2008 under changes made by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, but the state controller's office says it tracks only the state government's obligations. It does not track the patchwork of retiree health benefits provided by local governments.

The only comprehensive survey of the benefits was completed in 2008 by the California Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission, a panel convened by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the new reporting standard was taking effect.

The commission estimated that the state, cities, counties, school districts and other governmental entities in California faced at least $118 billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree medical benefits -- about twice the amount taxpayers owed on public pensions at the time. Today, the unfunded liability for California's two main public pension funds is about $150 billion.

"I don't think people recognized how much exposure there was for government on this front, and also the fact that none or very little of this was pre-funded," said Anne Sheehan, who served as executive director of the Schwarzenegger commission.

Stockton City Manager Bob Deis said the city of 290,000 had not set aside any money to pay for lifetime health care coverage for its workers. His office estimates the city will spend $9 million of Stockton's $165 million general fund to cover health insurance for about 11,000 city retirees. That's compared to $8 million the city will spend on health care for more than 12,000 current workers.

Deis, who inherited the contracts when he took the job in 2010, wants them renegotiated as part of a required mediation process that is taking place as the city tries to avoid bankruptcy. If Stockton files for Chapter 9 protection, its public employees might look to the city of Vallejo for an example of what it could mean for them.

Vallejo provided full health care coverage to its retirees but reduced that to a monthly stipend of $300 after it filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Retired city workers say they were blindsided.

"If I had thought this was even a possibility for the last 26 years, maybe I would have been pre-planning some kind of health care strategy," said former fire chief Vincent Sarullo.

Sarullo, 57, has an annual pension of $135,902 and counts himself among the luckier ones who have been able to absorb the expense. Some public employees, like Sarullo, are not eligible for Medicare or Social Security.

While many government workers can look forward to receiving medical, dental and vision benefits after they retire, such benefits are rapidly disappearing from the private sector.

In 1988, 66 percent of all companies with 200 or more workers offering health benefits to active workers also offered retiree health benefits, according to a 2011 Kaiser Health Foundation survey of employers. That dropped to 26 percent by 2011.

The opposite is true for California governments. According to the survey by the post-employment benefits commission, 86 percent of cities, 91 percent of counties and 89 percent of school districts offer retiree health benefits.

Many government workers can collect their full pensions before age 65, the eligible age for Medicare. Some governments provide retirees health care coverage as a bridge to Medicare. Once the employee is eligible, the retiree benefit becomes secondary to help them fill any Medicare coverage gaps.

A few local governments have begun to make changes. Thousand Oaks was the first city to contract with the state pension system to prefund retiree health care and has capped monthly benefits at $435.

Until a few years ago, employees could work for San Francisco for five years, leave and start claiming full retiree health care benefits once they turned 55. Under Proposition B in 2009, voters changed the rule so new workers have to contribute to a trust fund and must work 20 years to qualify for full benefits.

The city still faces a $4.4 billion long-term liability.

Most state workers have to work 20 years to qualify for full retiree health benefits, but tens of thousands of employees of the California State University system, the courts and Legislature have to work only five years to qualify.

As part of his retirement-reform package, Gov. Jerry Brown wants all new state and local government employees to work 25 years before qualifying for full retiree health care coverage.

"We didn't get into the mess overnight and we're not going to get out of it overnight," Brown said. "I'm doing my best to push it."

By the Associated Press

California State Park Closures: Packing Artifacts May Reduce Savings

SAN FRANCISCO -- Shuttering dozens of California state parks to trim millions from the state budget will take more than simply hanging a "Closed" sign on trailheads and beach parking lots. Many on the closure list house thousands of historical treasures that must be packed up, catalogued and stored if deals are not reached to save them.

The tens of thousands of items on public display paint a rich portrait of California's past. Among them are rare crystalline gold nuggets at the California Mining and Minerals Museum in Mariposa, painting masterworks showing early 20th century San Francisco street scenes and coastal landscapes at Shasta State Historical Park, and the writer Jack London's home and writing memorabilia in Sonoma County.

California officials admit they have been overwhelmed by the unprecedented move to close the parks, and just months before the planned closures they are working to catalog these important pieces of state history so they can undertake a massive packing, moving and storage effort should a deal not be reached. And if the state does have to move thousands of delicate items, it does not currently know how much it will cost – or how much of its projected $22 million in savings it will lose to pay for packing and long-term storage.

"When this started, I'm fairly sure we didn't have any exact science on packaging and storage of artifacts. They knew there would be a cost, but they weren't sure how to accurately estimate it," said Roy Stearns, a spokesman for the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

California operates 278 parks on 1.3 million acres, each protecting biological, historical or ecological resources, or in some cases all three.

As the July 1 closure date approaches, officials are unsure how many of the 70 parks on its closure list will remain open through partnerships. Currently the parks department has inked deals with nonprofits and other entities to keep 11 sites open, and 24 more parks have early-stage negotiations in process that officials caution are no sure thing.

Still, it's unclear how much savings are associated with individual park closings because the state can't provide a breakdown of operating costs for individual parks, according to a report issued in March by the Legislative Analyst Office. The state also failed to consider in its savings estimate the cost of packing, shipping and storing, the report said.

"There are parks on the list where short-term savings will exceed the cost of packing them up," Lia Moore, author of the report, told the Associated Press.

According to the LAO report there are a number of cost-saving and revenue generating ideas that the parks department has not implemented, despite years of declining budgets, that could have helped keep more parks from closing.

Some of the ideas include charging entrance fees rather than parking fees to deter visitors from leaving cars along roadways outside of parks and hiking in to avoid paying. The analyst estimated that if just one in eight people who visit parks paid to enter the state could reap "in the low tens of millions of dollars annually."

"The argument is you limit access socioeconomically, but by closing parks you're keeping people out of parks either way," Moore said.

The report also said reducing the need for the park system's 750 sworn peace officers by hiring staff at lower pay grades to guide tours and interpret exhibits could save money.

"Those creative ideas aren't new to us," said Stearns. Yet he said all of the ideas take time to implement and would not have helped save money by the July 1 deadline.

"We looked at a budget situation where the straw had broken the camel's back, and we could not afford to operate all the parks in system at adequate levels," he said.

As it stands, park superintendents are scrambling to find partners to fund and operate parks on the closure list before tackling the overwhelming job of packing them up.

"The California State Mining and Mineral Museum Association is working ... to keep it open and keep it there in Mariposa," said Kent Gresham, the park's sector superintendent. "If that doesn't work out, then as of July 1 we're going to have to pack up and relocate the collection."

The minerals museum alone is home to more than 13,000 artifacts that would cost more than $100,000 to pack and ship to storage, Gresham said.

The Shasta historical park houses another 23,000 items, including more than 100 early 1900s urban and landscape paintings by famous California artists such as Jules Pages, Maynard Dixon and Thaddeus Welch collected and donated by the late suffragette and arts patron Mae Helene Bacon Boggs.

"If she were alive this wouldn't be happening," said the park's sector superintendent Heidi Horvitz. "She was a real dynamo."

At nearby Weaverville Joss House State Historic Park, 6,780 individual Chinese artifacts and items will need to be packed and stored at the state's longest operating Taoist temple if an agreement with a nonprofit operator does not work out, Horvitz said. It will leave local third graders without a destination for their California history field trip, and the city of Weaverville without its downtown centerpiece.

Weaverville, Shasta and the mining museum are just three of the nearly 25 parks on the closure list that contain a significant collection of historical artifacts, according to a review of park assets.

State curators are capable of packing them, said Blaine Lamb, the head of the archaeology, history and museums division of the parks department. But he could not estimate how much the effort would cost – or if the costs would significantly eat into the $22 million the state hopes to save by the closures.

"Our preference is to keep these artifacts as close to the parks, or in the parks, as possible. Packing them up and moving them to storage in Sacramento is our strategy of last resort," Lamb said.

via Huffpost

No end in sight for mass unemployment in California

Nearly two years after the supposed end of the US recession, 10.9 percent of California’s labor force is officially unemployed. A new study released by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley documents in detail stagnant job growth in country’s most populous state.

California added only 1,500 jobs in January and 4,000 in February. The unemployment rate has been above 10 percent for three consecutive years, reflecting an employment situation that is significantly worse than the poor conditions prevailing throughout the country.

California lost 8.8 percent of all jobs during the recession that began in December 2007, and the state has since regained only 2.2 percent back.

By comparing data on normal population growth in the state and the projected level of future economic growth, the study predicts when California’s labor market will return to the level of 2007. Given a “strong job growth scenario,” this level of employment will be attained in 2018. In the event of a “moderate job growth scenario,” it will not be reached until 2023.

Although this “moderate scenario” assumes sustained job growth well above the rate since June 2009, no “poor scenario” was included in the projection.

The “underemployment” or real unemployment rate—including those who have given up looking for work or who are working part-time involuntarily—has been above 20 percent for the past three years, and is far higher than the national average. Only 56 percent of the working age population in California is employed, down from 62.2 percent before the start of the recession.

Compounding the slow growth in jobs are the steep cuts in government employment, which have hit California particularly hard. More than 10,000 government jobs were cut in February. Local governments, which employ 11.6 percent of the state’s workforce, laid off over seven percent of their employees between the beginning of the recession and February 2012. Also hard-hit is the construction industry, where employment has declined 33.6 percent since the bursting of the housing bubble.

Throughout the crisis, Democrats and Republicans have been united in cutting government jobs. At the end of March, California’s Democratic governor Jerry Brown unveiled a plan to consolidate state agencies, eliminating 39 California government agencies and cutting thousands of jobs in response to the state’s multi-billion dollar budget deficit.

The state’s educational system has been particularly affected over the past several years, and schools have seen drastic cuts in funding. In 2010 and 2011, 41 percent of all local government job cuts were in the education sphere.

Despite the insistence of both Democrats and Republicans that the private sector is the only source of jobs, total private sector growth in California has amounted to only 1.9 percent since the end of the recession.

Further underscoring the illusory nature of this “recovery” is the decline in household income, which has dropped in California by 9 percent since 2007. Adjusting for inflation, household income is the same in 2012 as 1998.

The fall in wages is only one component of the rapidly deteriorating living conditions of the working class. In 2010, the last year for which data is available, 6.1 million Californians, or 16 percent of the population, were living below the official poverty line, which grossly underestimates the true number of people facing poverty conditions.

Over the last decade, California’s once world-renowned public education system has been decimated by unending budget cuts. University of California tuition has tripled in that time. On March 15, over 20,000 public educators have received preliminary layoff notices. The budget for K-12 education will likely be slashed later this year by $4.8 billion, barring voter approval of higher sales and income tax through a referendum this November. Regardless of the outcome of this vote, billions more will be cut from welfare assistance and health care.

Amidst this catastrophic situation, California boasts some of the most striking levels of inequality in the country. A separate study found that between 1987 and 2009, 35.5 percent of all new income went to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, and 71.2 percent to the wealthiest one-tenth of Californians. The incomes of these wealthy individuals have mushroomed, while wage-earning Californians have steadily lost ground in real purchasing power.

Conditions in California are a grim expression of the economic and political reality of the United States. The capitalist crisis has become the occasion for a wholesale attack on the jobs and living conditions of the working class, spearheaded by a government that is in the pockets of the corporate and financial elite.

By Julian Quinn 23 April 2012

Police in Georgia arrested a 6-year-old girl for a temper tantrum. Ask the school to stop using police on elementary students.

Police in Georgia arrested a 6-year-old girl for a temper tantrum. Ask the school to stop using police on elementary students. Sign Constance's Petition Salecia Johnson is six years old. On April 13, her teachers say she had a temper tantrum in class -- but instead of putting her in time-out, the school called the police.  Salecia was handcuffed, charged with battery, and kept in police custody for an hour before her parents found out what was going on. Though all charges have been dropped, Salecia -- a 6-year-old --  now has an arrest record. Salecia's mom, Constance, says that "Salecia has been traumatized by this experience. She's afraid to return to school and recently woke up in the middle of the night saying 'they are coming to get me.'" Constance wants to make sure that this incident won't affect Salecia's future, and she wants answers about why police officers were involved in the first place. So Constance started a petition on Change.org demanding that Salecia's arrest be removed from her record and that Creekside Elementary pledge to stop involving police in school discipline. Click here to add your name. Constance believes that what happened to Salecia is part of a larger problem. Schools across America are adopting "zero-tolerance" policies that are making police involvement in school disciplinary matters more and more common, according to the Advancement Project, a group working with Constance's family. If thousands of people sign Constance's petition, the police and the officials at Creekside Elementary will see that they can't arrest and handcuff a six-year-old girl without facing public consequences. Schools around the country will take notice -- and Constance hopes there won't be another child that faces what Salecia did. Click here to sign Constance's petition demanding that Salecia's arrest be removed from her record and that Creekside Elementary pledge to stop involving police in school discipline. Thanks for being a change-maker, - William and the Change.org team

Jerry Brown says state budget deficit will probably top $10 billion

Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that the state budget deficit could increase by $1 billion or more above the $9.2 billion his administration estimated in January.

Brown said that because of court challenges, weaker-than-expected tax receipts and other factors, the state’s deficit would probably grow when he releases revised budget numbers next month.

"Whether it's $1 billion or a couple billion, we'll let you know in a couple weeks,” Brown said after speaking to the California Medical Assn. in Sacramento.

The doctors’ group has donated more than $250,000 to Brown’s initiative for the fall ballot, which would temporarily raise taxes on sales and incomes of more than $250,000. Brown said his initiative was constructed to have the greatest chance for voter approval, even though polls show Californians are divided on the measure.

The governor said the initiative reflected "my best thinking" and noted that he’s been a student of state politics ever since his father worked for a gubernatorial campaign in the 1940s.

“I thought I knew a lot when I ran for governor, I thought I knew a lot when I ran for president," he said. "I thought I knew a little more when I ran for mayor of Oakland, I thought I knew a little more when I ran for attorney general, and now, here as governor again.”

A New Way of Life Reentry Project Susan Burton

Susan Burton confronts 3 police officers in front of her resident where she house women and their children, after they came to do a compliance check under AB109. The officers handcuffed the woman, searched her twice, tore her room and closet up and told her that it was protocol and that they would be back. All of this took place while Board of Supervisor Mark Ritley Thomas was down the street visiting another resident of Susan where the woman had just told her story to MRT and his crew.

Susan speaks to some of the issues concerning AB 109 and calls up the woman that the police harrassed earlier that day to tell of what took place.

Chief of the police officers that came out speaks to the townhall meeting about AB 109 at the Community Coalition headquarters. He indicated that there should be some changes and that they were working on reviewing how officers do compliance checks.