I was recently in North Dakota, a state that, in addition to its many charms, has a small budget surplus. That’s right, a surplus.

I live in California, however, where voters recently rejected a slate of propositions that would have provided some short-term band-aids to our hemorrhaging $35 billion budget shortfall. These poorly designed and totally opaque propositions were total stumpers for most voters, myself included.

Only one passed, with about 80% of the vote. This proposition limits pay increases to our state legislators. That should solve our mess. Now we face draconian budget cuts (e.g. raising college tuitions while at the same time cutting college scholarship funding), an unraveling safety net, and on and on, and yet our legislature is totally unable to agree on any measures to address the situation.

I will make one safe prediction: the legislature will not pass a budget. As required, by June 30. The longer they take, the worse the cuts need to be.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Assorted Musings, Nonprofit Sector, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.