[quote author="no_vaseline" date=1226043984]It's not like he couldn't start to fill the hole by following the law and restoring the Vehicle License Fee ..............
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger</a>
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Eat sh*t Arnold. Where's my audit you promised when you recalled Gray? Where's my piles and piles of government waste?
They have to raise taxes somewhere, or reduce the size of goverment which means prisons (releasing inmates) or cutting off the old and indgent who get MediCAL. There are no other options. The cut-taxes-and-increase-spending train has ran to the end of the dirt road.</blockquote>
While CA does have an unusually large amount spent on prisons, much of the cost has been put in places where it is hard to find. Much of government budgeting and accounting either hides what is really going on, or makes it hard to find where the inefficiency is at. It's not that the State claims to spend $130 billion a year and is really spending $150. It's more like in past years they spent $130, but committed to another $20 in various ways.
One of my favorite targets for eliminating waste is impossible to find from financials, but is pretty easy to see in person. In LA, full size firetrucks with 3-4 people show up for straight paramedic calls. There is usually at least one ambulance, one fire dept paramedic, and one big red firetruck normally used for house fires. Why? I'm going to bet it's some sort of work rule that initially sounded reasonable to somebody, and then it became really tough to repeal. You don't need nonparamedic firefighters at a nursing home for a heart attack. You don't need them when a couple of drunks got in a fight. People do not just combust because they are sick or injured. You would need some other form of hazard for that, like an actual fire, or at least an auto accident where there might possibly be a risk of fire or hazardous chemicals to clean up.
There are an assortment of services you have to do in person in much of CA which are online elsewhere. That means a bigger building to heat and cool, parking, security, more employees.
Some jobs don't really need to exist. Much of California's income tax system could be replaced (if you could get past the onslaught of special interests). Other states have much simpler systems. A simple example is Rhode Island, which say "multiply your federal income taxes by 25%, send us a check". Pretty easy to administer.