Yesterday afternoon Jerry Brown announced that he has given up talks with legislative Republicans on putting an item on the June ballot to extend taxes and prevent about $10 billion in budget cuts.
Even though the initiative would allow voters to decide for themselves whether they want to extend taxes, Republicans in the legislature would rather kill democracy and damage the state of California than let the people decide.
Here is yet another example of tyranny of the minority in our state legislature. Brown needed a 2/3 vote to get it on the ballot, and while he had a solid majority he couldn't get just 3 Republicans in the Senate to vote for letting the people decide.
They may begin collecting signatures to get it on the November ballot rather than the June as hoped. Unfortunately, this means that more effort will need to be expended to put it on the ballot, but beyond that, extremely significant cuts will need to be made to the state budget which will begin in July.
Our schools already lost 5 days of education this year, down to 175 days. Will it be 15 missing days next year?
The really amusing (?) part of this is that not only are the Republicans against letting the people vote on tax extensions, they are also against the cuts that have been proposed, and they aren't offering any constructive suggestions about how to deal with the hole in the budget.
They've got nothing. And their failure to lead or even go along with reality is killing our state.