The state budget that no one seems particularly pleased with got Jerry Brown's John Hancock on it earlier this afternoon —but not before the governor got a chance to spill some red ink by vetoing several line items adding up to another $23.8 million in cuts to the general fund. Those cuts will hit courts, transportation and educational oversight programs like the Postsecondary Education Commission the hardest.
The democrats, downtrodden bunch that they are, lamented the deepened cuts but maintained that it was the best they could do without support from the GOP. Meanwhile, Attorney General and former San Francisco DA Kamala Harris already warned lawmakers that deep cuts to the state Department of Justice would seriously harm its ability to do it's job cracking down on drugs, gang violence and illegal border crossings. With the signed budget, the courts are looking at another $22 million cut to court operations and security.
The budget still relies on a big $4 billion in revenues that hopefully come through in the coming months. If they don't, the trigger cuts kick in and the state could see another $2.5 billion in spending for schools disappear. So while we keep our fingers crossed for those revenue windfalls, here is Pavement's 1992 classic Trigger Cut, which seems apropos:
