Jerry Brown is going to be a good Governor, not a magician, according to Assemblymember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael).
Huffman said today that Brown, sworn in Monday as California’s 39th governor, is up to the challenge to get California out of its fiscal mess.
“Jerry Brown is the right person at the right time for California,” Huffman said in a press statement. “I am confident that he will be far more effective than his predecessor. But our expectations also have to be realistic. He can’t solve our massive fiscal problems without difficult and potentially unpopular decisions.”
Brown inherits a $100 billion, five-year deficit caused primarily, Huffman said, by two things: short-sighted decisions made early in the Schwarzenegger administration that exploded the structural deficit (namely, eliminating the Vehicle License Fee, committing the state to repay local governments for the lost revenues, and then borrowing $15 billion to conceal the problem); and the plunge in state revenues due to the global economic recession.
“It’s going to take creativity, leadership, determination, and political risk to get us out of this mess, but that’s Jerry Brown’s skill set. I think he’s up to the challenge.”
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