CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“BROWN GIVES CLUES ON POSSIBLE NEXT TERM”
Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t yet said
whether he’ll run for a new term as governor, his fourth overall. Aides like to
chortle that, “Well, he has until the March 7 filing deadline to decide.”
But as he travels the state, giving
short and punchy speeches generally without benefit of either notes or
teleprompter, Brown lately has dropped strong hints that he will indeed seek
another four years in the Capitol and has given some hints of how his next term
might look.
To no one’s surprise, another four
years of Brown would probably resemble the last four, but without draconian budget
cuts for everything from universities to state parks and care for the indigent
and frail elderly that he made while getting rid of the $26 billion budget
deficit he inherited from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But even with the budget
situation much improved, don’t expect any push for big spending. In fact,
expect pushback from Brown if liberal Democrats in the Legislature attempt to
spend all or most of the surplus the bipartisan state legislative analyst
predicts.
Brown doesn’t do many PowerPoint
presentations, but he does like to show one slide, looking like a jagged chart
of the ups and downs of a single stock. This one shows the extreme peaks and
valleys of California’s take from capital gains taxes over the last 20 years.
"A lot of our budget cycles are
due to the volatility of capital gains,” Brown said late last fall. “We
are at a peak now, not quite as high as the all-time high. The question is when
do we get to the next valley. It will come. So we will have a rainy day fund.
We will spend where appropriate, but we’ll be tough and keep things pretty
even. Money today doesn’t necessarily mean money tomorrow.”
Anyone hoping the state’s impending
windfall will mean a repeat of the almost $2 billion in “prosperity dividend”
checks handed out in 2000 by then-Gov. Gray Davis to all California taxpayers
will be sorely disappointed. Davis also cut some taxes when he had a surplus,
notably the vehicle registration fee, which backfired on him. Brown won’t.
Also expect Brown to keep granting
more authority to local governments and school boards. Always one to enjoy
obscure historical references, he cited the Renaissance scholar Michel de
Montaigne, who once said “laws should be rare and be abstract when we have
them.” By which Brown meant he will try to give city councils, county boards
and schools a looser leash than he already has in, for example, erasing some
formulas for how state education money must be spent on the local level.
Californians can also expect Brown to
continue making occasional forays to places like China and Europe, where he’s
proven a more effective salesman for the state than the flashier
Schwarzenegger.
“I have a lot of optimism for this
state,” he said. “Over 50 percent of the venture capital in America comes to
California; California gets four to five times more patents every year than any
other state.
“But we don’t know exactly what we’ll
invent next. Like (Gaspar de) Portola and (Junipero) Serra, we don’t know what
we’re going to get. They had no idea a Gold Rush was coming. Who (back then)
knew anything about technology and biotech?
“We don’t have a Gold Rush now where
we take things out of the ground,” he added. “We take riches from the human
brain now, and we do more of it in California than anywhere else.”
Not that Brown glosses over problems.
He’s trying to deal with prison overcrowding, one bane of his current term. “We
also have problems, big problems, with pensions, roads and climate change. Sure
we have issues, but we have enlightened, dedicated people…, which is why living
in California is a great gift and why this state is still a model.”
None of that sounds much like a fellow
getting ready to retire. In fact, it sounds a lot like the rhetoric that
preceded Brown’s 2010 campaign. Which is why four more years of impatient
waiting are likely ahead for all those politicians who would love him to retire
so they can try to get ahead.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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