Californians Are Asked for $6.9 Billion in New Taxes

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

LOS ANGELES — Gov. Jerry Brown called on California voters Thursday to approve $6.9 billion in temporary new taxes, including a surcharge on big earners, as part of yet another bad-news budget proposal, this one for 2012. He warned that without those tax increases, California would be forced to impose severe cuts in public schools that could reduce the school year by three weeks.

Mr. Brown said that California was in significantly better shape than it was a year ago when he took office, pointing both to very gradual improvements in the economy and to cuts put in place in the current budget. The state still faces a shortfall of $9.2 billion next year, compared with a $26.6 billion shortfall last year.

But his latest budget proposal made clear that California has not emerged from what has proved to be the most difficult and destructive fiscal storm in its history. Even if voters approve the taxes Mr. Brown proposed as part of the $92 billion budget for 2012 — which is far from certain — this budget still contains a new round of $4.2 billion in cuts, mainly to welfare and home health care. Last year, the state imposed over $5 billion in spending cuts.

“We’re doing the best we can,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference that served as a reminder of the extent to which budget problems have dominated his first year in office. “What I’ve laid out is going to be very hard to digest.”

Mr. Brown said he would ask voters in November for a total of $6.9 billion in taxes, in the form of a temporary income tax surcharge on those making over $250,000 a year and a half-percent increase in the sales tax, to 7.75 percent. The taxes would expire at the end of 2016. Polls suggest that after five years of often brutal spending cuts, including $5 billion in this year’s budget, voters are inclined to pass those taxes.

If not, Mr. Brown’s budget includes cuts that would automatically go into effect. They would include $4.8 billion for public schools and community colleges. Higher education, already blistered by cuts over the past five years, would face another $400 million decrease. California courts would be reduced by $125 million, potentially forcing them to close three days a month, and spending would be trimmed for firefighting in public forests.

Democratic lawmakers have supported an increase in taxes but signaled that Mr. Brown would face resistance to more cuts. Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic president pro tem of the Senate, noted that some projections have noted an increase in revenues over the past month.

“If that trend continues even slightly, we may avoid the need to make the kinds of cuts the governor now suggests,” Mr. Steinberg said. “While in the end we may have to cut more, doing it now should be a last resort.”

Mr. Brown’s budget was supposed to be released next Tuesday. But the state’s Department of Finance inadvertently posted the budget on its Web site on Thursday afternoon, sending Mr. Brown’s office scrambling to get his budget out. “Six days of leaked good budget news lost, lost,” Steve Glazer, Mr. Brown’s senior political adviser, posted on his Twitter account. “Wait there is no good budget news. O.K., no biggie.”

NYT