As states slash public sector, Washington reluctant to act
For tens of thousands of the nation’s teachers, it is the start of an endless summer. In the past month, the Los Angeles Unified School District has sent pink slips to 693 employees. The Detroit school system has laid off 1,983 teachers, including Michigan’s 2007 teacher of the year. And Greensboro, N.C., has received national attention for firing or reassigning more than 500 teachers in a district serving just 71,000 students.
The Obama administration has estimated that school districts across the country this year might lay off as many as 300,000 employees, many of them teachers. That would be five times the number of layoffs in 2009 and ten times the number of layoffs in 2008.
These pink-slipped teachers are just the first and most noticeable wave of public-sector employees getting the chop as states slash budgets. As state and local governments prepare to begin their new fiscal year on July 1, they are frantically laying off not just teachers but social workers, firefighters and police officers. Oakland, Calif., is firing 80 police officers, more than 10 percent of the current force. New Jersey and New York are bracing for state-wide cuts in governmental offices.
The layoffs are generally the result of lost tax revenue in the recession but particularly due to lost stimulus money. Last year the federal government provided Recovery Act funds for states to make up their yawning budget gaps. (Every state save for Vermont is required to keep a balanced budget.) This year, Congress has declined to step in.
It looks like 2010 might be the annus horribilis for the states, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Even though state tax revenues are starting to rebound a little bit, the absence of the federal assistance from last year and the need to pass the [state Medicaid funding] and education assistance is huge,” Jon Shure, the deputy director of the CBPP’s state fiscal project, explains. “There’s reason to believe this year will be the worst.”
The teachers and other public-sector employees might be just the start. The CBPP has estimated that if states cut their spending from 2009 to 2010 the same level they did from 2008 to 2009, it might cost as many as 900,000 public- and private-sector jobs — swelling the ranks of the unemployed by five percent or more.
While the outlook this year is bad, it is hardly better down the road. “Usually after a recession ends it takes a couple years for state revenues to rebound,” Shure says. “If it normally takes two to three, and this recession is among the worst ever, we’re really in uncharted territory.”
Now deep in that uncharted territory, states crafting their third straight recession-era budgets have no recourse but to slash services and jobs. For schools, “the cuts are definitely going to hurt a lot more and deeper in poor urban districts,” says Elena Silva, senior policy analyst for the think tank Education Sector. “The teachers there are much more important, much more urgent for those kids. If they lose a year or three months [of educational gains], it hurts a lot more for kids in struggling schools than suburban kids. It’s a double effect: In cities, there are more teachers laid off because of budget gaps, but the kids in those cities are most vulnerable and most likely to be hurt by budget cuts.”
Facing overstuffed classrooms and reduced police patrols, the Obama administration has led a furious charge to convince Congress to help the states meet their budget needs. In a letter to the majority and minority House and Senate leaders earlier this month, President Obama wrote, “I am concerned … that the lingering economic damage left by the financial crisis we inherited has left a mounting employment crisis at the state and local level that could set back the pace of our economic recovery.” He continued: “If we allow these layoffs to go forward, it will not only mean hundreds of thousands fewer teachers in our classrooms, firefighters on call and police officers on the beat, it will also mean more costs helping these Americans look for new work, while their lost paychecks will mean less tax revenues and less demand for the products and services provided by other workers.”
But despite the efforts of individual members of Congress and the administration, the House and Senate have come up short on delivering aid to the states. On Thursday, centrist deficit hawks finally refused to vote for the jobs bill. Senate Democrats spun off the Medicaid portion of the bill, extending stimulus funding for Medicaid through the end of this year — not, as many states had anticipated, through June 2011.
Take Alabama, for instance. The state’s legislature had already adjourned for the fiscal year, its budget set with an expected $197 million in federal Medicaid money. Much of that money is now gone.
California, too, is reeling. “I support restraining federal spending, but cutting the only funding designed to help states maintain the very safety-net programs Congress mandates us to preserve will have devastating consequences,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) wrote in a letter to his state’s congressional delegation in response to the funding drop.
The reduced Medicaid funding has not only meant the end of special programs, such as anti-domestic violence initiatives, daycare and mental health services. It will end up costing teachers and other public-sector workers too. States such as Pennsylvania are reacting to the Medicaid funding cut by rearranging their budgets — and sacking workers.
And other, bolder provisions to save local jobs are dead in the water. Rep. George Miller’s (D-Calif.) Local Jobs for America Act would have provided $75 billion to local governments to keep employees on the payroll. It is stuck in committee. Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) proposal to grant $23 billion to keep public-school teachers in their classrooms, the Keep Our Educators Working Act, one of several such edu-jobs proposals, has foundered despite support from Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the White House.
As of yet, the Senate has no plans to authorize any additional funds to help states close their budget gaps — and with teachers unions protesting and citizens starting to question the cuts, Silva, of Education Sector, sees a “huge political mess” fomenting for the fall.
“A lot of people running for office now are not going to be in really good shape,” she notes. “If you watch those districts where there have been significant teacher layoffs, unpopular layoffs, it will be interesting to see where the blame falls.”
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California Assemblyman Ammiano Proposes Legalizing Marijuana
Can legalizing California’s most popular recreational drug really save the state’s economy, defeat the mexican drug cartels, and get pot out of the hands of minors? Tom Ammiano, a freshman State Assemblyman thinks so.
According to Rep. Ammiano’s press secretary Quintin Mecke , Ammiano’s proposed bill “would remove all penalties in California law on cultivation, transportation, sale, purchase, possession, or use of marijuana, natural THC, or paraphernalia for persons over the age of 21.” The bill would additionally prohibit state and local law officials from enforcing federal marijuana laws. Ammiano’s bill calls for “establishing a fee on the sale of marijuana at a rate of $50 per ounce.” Mecke said that would bring in roughly $1 billion for the state, according to estimates made by marijuana advocacy organizations. In addition AB390 would set prices significantly below the current street value thereby under-cutting the Mexican drug cartels and greatly reducing drug-running and illegal border crossings.
You might be thinking that legalizing of the sale of marijuana would greatly proliferate usage. Currently, minors can obtain marijuana easier than they can alcohol and tobacco products. By selling marijuana to the public through dispensaries, California can regulate the legal sales age and collect taxes desperately needed to help its ailing economy.
For most of human history, marijuana has been completely legal. It’s not a recently discovered plant, nor is it a long-standing law. Marijuana has been illegal for less than 1% of the time that it’s been in use. Its known uses go back further than 7,000 B.C. and it was legal as recently as when Ronald Reagan was a boy.
The marijuana (hemp) plant, of course, has an incredible number of uses. The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp, and over the centuries the plant was used for food, incense, cloth, rope, and much more. This adds to some of the confusion over its introduction in the United States, as the plant was well known from the early 1600’s, but did not reach public awareness as a recreational drug until the early 1900’s.
America’s first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. It was a law “ordering” all farmers to grow Indian hempseed. There were several other “must grow” laws over the next 200 years (you could be jailed for not growing hemp during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767), and during most of that time, hemp was legal tender (you could even pay your taxes with hemp — try that today!) Hemp was such a critical crop for a number of purposes (including essential war requirements – rope, etc.) that the government went out of its way to encourage growth.
The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp “plantations” (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton.*
Betty Yee, the chairwoman of the Board of Equalization, called Ammiano’s proposal “a responsible measure on how to work out the regulatory framework of the legalization of marijuana.” Her board’s research indicated $1.3 billion in tax dollars could immediately head into the state’s coffers from the fee on marijuana and the sales tax on medical pot. She figured the halving of marijuana’s street price would cause a consumption increase of 40 percent, but the $50 per ounce levy would cut use by 11 percent.
Steve Gutwillig, the state director of Drug Policy Alliance, noted that regulatory measures like Ammiano’s bill can work: Teen smoking is way down, and he claims juveniles report it is easier to obtain marijuana than purchase smokes. “Marijuana arrests actually increased 18 percent in California in 2007 while all other arrests for controlled substances fell,” he said. “This costs the state a billion dollars a year and taxpayers are footing the bill. Meanwhile, black marketers are laughing all the way to the bank.”
But the morning’s most forceful speaker was Judge James P. Gray, who retired from his 25-year post on the Orange County Superior Court six weeks ago. With his gray suit, tasseled loafers, and conservative salt-and-pepper haircut, he looked like central casting’s offering for “Republican candidate for higher office.” Not surprisingly, Gray did run as a Republican for Congress against Bob Dornan and Loretta Sanchez and Senate vs. Bill Jones and Barbara Boxer. He now says he’s “not a politician — and I have the votes to prove it.” “I served 25 years on the bench and I’ve seen the results of this attempted prohibition. It doesn’t make marijuana less available, but it does clog the court system,” he said.
“The stronger we get on marijuana, the softer we get with regard to all other prosecutions because we have only so many resources. And we at this moment, have thousands of people in state prison right this minute who did nothing but smoke marijuana.”
Gray noted that anyone who tokes up while out on parole can immediately be sent right back to prison, at great cost to the taxpayers. “You and I as adults can go home tonight and drink 10 martinis. It’s not a healthy thing to do but it’s not illegal. Someone who smokes marijuana and goes to bed risks jail,” continued the judge. “I don’t smoke marijuana and if you legalized it today and gave it away at every street corner I’m still not going to. But the most harmful thing about marijuana today is prison – and also the most expensive. I take President Obama at his word – he said let’s look at what’s working and what is not, and jettison those programs that are not working.” Judge James Gray notes that quaffing 10 martinis is perfectly legal.
Obama also wrote in his autobiography that he did “a little blow” and Ammiano is hopeful the new president will look upon this issue differently than his predecessor. Ammiano told SF Weekly that he doesn’t expect his bill to pass “overnight,” but doesn’t see it as merely a “placeholder.” As far as superseding federal law, he pointed to a similar bill recently introduced in Congress by Rep. Barney Frank; hopefully the law of the land will change. If not, Ammiano hoped to exploit “fuzziness” regarding state and federal laws and the low priority this state has given to busting marijuana users entitled by Proposition 215.
My take? Yes, let’s legalize pot use. The arguments against the legalization of marijuana do not hold water and are just plain absurd, given that more dangerous substances, like alcohol and nicotine, are legal. Plus, think of the revenue that can be made by taxing the legal use of pot. I believe that Californians, if given the choice, will choose to purchase pot legally and knowing the money is going to the state instead of drug cartels.
Furthermore, our prisons are already overcrowded, some of those incarcerated for possession of pot or other drugs. Unless they are truly violent and a danger to society, then let’s release them and stop wasting the state’s law enforcement’s resources and money sending these these people to prison. This way, the state saves money and there’s now more room in prison for those truly violent people that need to be locked up.
And let’s face it, people are going to continue to buy pot, regardless if it’s legal or not. If you cannot beat them, then you might as well join them, as the old saying goes.
Your thoughts?
*For a full history of the criminalization of marijuana, read this article by Pete Guither.
The LA Unified school district is paying about 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while they collect roughly $10 million a year.
The Los Angeles Times has, at times, printed stories without verifying the facts before going to press. When Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger lists facts and figures that are not accurate, the Times does not always verify the statistics. They just print whatever Schwartzenegger says as if it was fact. Now, Governor Arnold knows this and gives press conferences where he says, “the polling is trending in our direction,” when in fact the poll numbers at the time show the opposite.
That having been said – once in a while the LA Times gets something right.
LA Unified is paying about 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year, even as layoffs are considered because of a budget gap.
Read the Times article here
Last month, the school board voted to lay off as many as 2,400 teachers and 2,000 other personnel to deal with a $596 million budget shortfall for the upcoming school year.
Matthew Kim, a special education teacher, was removed from Grant High School in Van Nuys in 2002 amid allegations that he improperly touched female students. The board voted to fire him in 2003 but he has challenged the decision in both administrative hearings and court.
Seven years later, he earns up to $68,000 a year while, essentially, staying at home.
Kim cannot be given any actual work but he and others whose fitness is under review are “housed,” or placed in district buildings where they remain during work hours.
Last week, however, Kim was told to continue the routine at home because the offices set aside for “housed” employees were becoming overcrowded.
While Kim has been “housed” the longest, most cases take months, at least, to resolve.
Other California school districts assign work to staffers who are under misconduct review. In San Francisco, some workers are given clerical or warehouse work, said Jolie Wineroth, the district’s senior executive director for human resources.
“I don’t want to give anyone a free vacation,” she said.
However, Los Angeles teachers are not assigned such work because it isn’t listed under their duties in their union contract.
“Why would we denigrate (teachers) by forcing them to do something they’re not supposed to do?” said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents nearly 48,000 teachers and other district workers.
District Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines said the policy for “housed” employees should be changed.
“I don’t believe they should just be sitting—that’s taxpayer money,” he said.
additional information from associated press articles
L.A. Mayor trying to “back door” additional Property Tax Increase
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (born Tony Villar) endorses additional Property Tax Increase, but tries to “back door” increase by using mail-in voting only.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa“The mayor supports clean water,” added Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo. “And he thinks the residents will support the idea that we should maintain our clean water projects.”
Although property owner ballots are regularly issued for lighting or park assessment districts, those involve small neighborhoods — not the entire city, Councilman Tom LaBonge said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a citywide mailing,” said LaBonge, a 35-year veteran of City Hall.
The plan is eliciting jeers from some anti-tax activists, who point out that Villaraigosa has already tripled the city’s trash collection fee from $11 per month to $36.32 per month for single-family homes. Proposition O currently adds $10.22 to the property tax bill of a $350,000 home and will eventually climb to $35. The mayor also campaigned last fall for two education bond measures that will increase the size of property tax bills over the next decade.
“People are already staggering under the load,” said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.