Shohei Ohtani is the only major league baseball player who can hit both hits and pitch at an aristocratic level.
Perhaps he should also manage the state budget of California.
I say because of their new contract. In this winter, Ohtani signed that initially 10 years, as a contract of $ 700 million which was reported to play for La Dozers. But the real details were different.
Ohtani agreed to assemble $ $ 2 million annually for the next 10 years. The team will postpone the remaining deal, some $ 680 million – and pay Ohtani for over a decade from now, when it retired further in the 40s. Ostani essentially gives up more money to the doors to sign other top players and to create an elite team around it; Future Dozers teams are not their problems.
To find a public financial documents in California with more deficient than Ohthani’s contract, you have to look at the proposed state budget government last month to see Gavan Newsom.
Trying to discontinue the $ 58 billion budget gap, Newsom is depending on at least 10 billion dollars dependence and delaying payment.
Such defales are complex – many innings of money between accounts are included. The proposed budget pays two university systems of the state, suggests that they borrow instead. The budget delays $ 1.6 billion in transit grant and $ 700 million in school facilities.
And in an accounting gimmick, Newsom saves $ 1 billion by pushing the last state parole of the 2024–25 budget year in a new budget year in a day.
Deferrals do not include education in $ 10 billion-plus, which Newsom and Democrats claim that their budget does not cut. But it is misleading. The office of the state’s non-party legislative analysts found that California is actually reducing spending by $ 15.2 billion on schools and community colleges against the budget enacted in June 2023.
The way the state does this, it is very complex to explain here-it includes three-part proposal 98 funding formula. Short version: Newsom 2022-23 is charging $ 9 billion in the cut in school year and defines these cuts again as funding baseline reset. There are many more Arabs in school cuts that appear in the budget how they will be implemented.
This should not surprise the California residents. As this column has earlier noted, “screw the kids” effectively transformed “Eureka” into the motto of the state, even though it is not yet printed on official documents.
Meanwhile, the same budget cuts something in an extended state bureaucracy that has recently seen significant increments. Staffing increases and picks up payment, producing even more pension obligations in the coming years. Payment to retired workers, as Shohi considers Ohtani, is a form of deferred compensation.
Why is the budget so strange? Over the years, I have argued a long distance with David Crane, a former UC Regent and a member of the State Teacher Pension Fund Board, who established the rule for California, a political organization to choose more public-elevated MPs.
The crane argues that the rule of California fails because we have a lack of politicians who have the courage to take the powerful labor and corporate lobby of the state.
My argument is that the problem is structural – that the wrong governing system of California and the broken state constitution excludes the budget.
But in this particular budget season, I should accept that the crane has a better side of logic. California is not in recession. The Governor and Democratic Supermagority of the Legislature has money and now the power to make a difficult choice. By doing a lot, they will make it difficult to balance the future budget, and will pursue more costs on the next generation of California.
This is why our leaders should consult crane, and work hard to evaluate programs for effectiveness. They should cut the departments and initiatives that do not work. State agencies and local governments should also implement the best idea of the crane: stop spending billions on retired health care costs and instead government workers rely on federal programs such as Medicare and Obamacare, such as other retired people. Eliminating these retired health benefits will make the money free to provide better services for the people of California.
The irony is that when the details of Ohtani’s contract were first revealed, some top state financial authorities criticized the defenders. He complained that California was likely to dodge the income tax of California and left the kingdom as long as $ 680 million is paid.
They had a point – this is why the state should no longer copy Ohtani.
Truly, an ohtani is harder than fastball, it is that California does not have time to waste with gimmick. In the January budget of Newsom, the receipts behind highly optimistic revenue estimates are already running billions. If the governor tears his proposal and offers a rigorous budget that depends on the reforms, he will kill a fiscal domestic run.
Those who write a connecting California column for Mathews Zócalo Public Square.