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[December 30, 2009]

EDITORIAL: Two-year budget worth a look: State needs to get off the yearly roller coaster spending and form a longer timeline to deal with planning.

Dec 30, 2009 (Merced Sun-Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- It took a disastrous financial meltdown and a budding grass-roots effort to create a constitutional convention.

Whatever the motivation, California lawmakers are starting to suggest new ways to fix the state's broken budget process.

One big reform would be to switch from a one-year budget cycle to a two-year cycle. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, has mentioned that reform in several interviews in the last week, giving it instant prominence when the Legislature returns to the Capitol on Monday.

The problem with the current one-year cycle is that lawmakers each year only appear to balance the budget -- with temporary, short-term measures. These one-year budgets not only mask the long-term financial condition of the state, but produce growing deficits in future years.

As the "oh" decade comes to a close (Paul Krugman calls it the Big Zero), California has run out of short-term solutions. It is long past time for the state to adopt a long-term financial planning process. A two-year budget cycle would help.

Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass formed bipartisan select committees in September to come up with a package of reform proposals by Jan. 12.

Senate Chair Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and Assembly Chair Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, held hearings and are on target to deliver recommendations -- including a two-year budget cycle.

Under this idea, the first year of the legislative session would be devoted to the budget; the second year (even-numbered years) would be devoted to other business, including any needed midcourse corrections on the two-year budget.

In the budget year, the Legislature would evaluate state programs.

Currently, little of the annual budget gets serious scrutiny.

Ineffective programs and programs that have outlived their usefulness continue without review.

A two-year budget cycle, like those used in 21 other states, would give California lawmakers time to review the performance of individual programs.

As Steinberg said in a pre-Christmas interview with The Sacramento Bee, "We need to do a better job of shining a light ... on what works well and doesn't." Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, has pressed state leaders to adopt biennial budgeting in the hope it would facilitate better long-range planning.

Other support has come from the California Citizens Budget Commission, the Little Hoover Commission, the California Constitution Revision Commission, the California Business Roundtable, the League of Women Voters of California and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2004 California Performance Review.

In the past decade, Republicans and Democrats alike have introduced constitutional amendments and bills to change the state budget to a biennial cycle. None made it out of committee.

Things should be different in January 2010.

The stars seem in alignment for lawmakers and voters to amend the California Constitution to change from an annual to a biennial budget.

For at least one year in each two-year session, the Legislature should be less a "bill factory," processing way too much trivial legislation pushed by special interests, and more of a body focused on California's budget priorities.

------ Editorials are the opinion of the Merced Sun-Star editorial board. Members of the editorial board include Interim Publisher Debra Kuykendall, Executive Editor Mike Tharp, Editorial Page Editor Keith Jones, Copy Desk Chief Jesse Chenault and Online Editor Brandon Bowers.

To see more of the Merced Sun-Star or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercedsunstar.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Merced Sun-Star, Calif.

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