SACRAMENTO (AP) ― California lawmakers are scheduled to vote Friday on a compromise budget deal that averted a historic veto by including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's demands for budget reform.
The spending plan also scraps some of the borrowing gimmicks opposed by Schwarzenegger, who threatened to reject an agreement legislators approved just days earlier.
The state's four legislative leaders met with the governor again Thursday and agreed to many of his demands after conceding they were uncertain whether they could muster the two-thirds vote of the state Legislature required to override his veto,
They emerged from a mid-afternoon meeting saying they would change the $143 billion spending plan the Legislature approved two days earlier.
The deal came 80 days into California's fiscal year, making it the longest budget stalemate in California history. Without a spending plan, the state has been forced to suspend billions of dollars in payments to schools, medical clinics, daycare centers and state vendors since July 1.
Schwarzenegger had criticized the earlier plan for failing to meet his demands for a more robust rainy day fund. He said the budget relied on accounting gimmicks to close a $15.2 billion deficit -- such as collecting an extra 10 percent of workers' income tax in advance and repaying it later -- that could lead to an even larger deficit next year.
The four legislative leaders said they had agreed to remove that provision in their latest deal.
There are still plenty of problems in California's balance sheet that need to be addressed with budget cuts and not increased taxes and fees. The state government, like the federal goverment, is full of entitlement programs, commissions, and who knows what else that don't work and just suck up taxpayer dollars. In California we have the line item veto, and the governor needs to use his pen and strike that stuff out.
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