Every year, a plan passes that collapses by next May.

There's another factor that's weighing on the budget - a $2.1-billion repayment to local governments that the state is required to make this year. It's another example of how short-term budget fixes, this one made under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, can cause more headaches down the line.

The CalPERS board raised the annual state payment for state worker pensions $213 million to a total of $3.7 billion, rejecting Gov. Brown's request for a bigger increase to avoid a "loan" costing "$145.9 million over the next 20 years."

Iowa's Republican governor, Terry Branstad, boasted how he balanced the state's budget without raising taxes and is getting calls from California businesses looking to move.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants California's state government employees to take a 5 percent pay cut to help balance the budget, yet the savings he forecast in his revised budget proposal are far from assured because he must negotiate details of any cuts with dozens of labor unions that have been reluctant to accept wage rollbacks and hold enormous sway with the Democratic lawmakers who control the Legislature.

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposal for closing California's $16-billion funding gap includes 4-day state workweeks and Medi-Cal cuts. He warns that cuts will be even more severe if voters reject tax hikes on the November ballot.

Gov. Jerry Brown said that California's shortfall was now projected to be $16 billion, up from $9.2 billion in January. Mr. Brown said that he would propose a revised budget on Monday to deal with it.

Gov. Jerry Brown is targeting a new part of the budget to close a widening deficit by seeking to reduce state worker costs in his revised spending plan, according to sources with knowledge of his plans.

The S&P memo cautioned that the agency could revise its positive outlook on California's debt if the Legislature fails to pass a balanced budget by its June 15 deadline

With state revenues slowing to a trickle as the end of April draws near, the state's top fiscal analyst said that California could be "a few billion dollars" shy of Gov. Jerry Brown's budget projections through June 2013.

The CalPERS board raised the annual state payment for state worker pensions $213 million to a total of $3.7 billion, rejecting Gov. Brown's request for a bigger increase to avoid a "loan" costing "$145.9 million over the next 20 years."

It's been 12 months since Gov. Jerry Brown announced his proposals to reform the public pension system, yet action on his 12-point plan that increases the retirement age has been slow.

California's great public pension battles are heating up, and may be headed for some kind of political explosion.

Twenty California counties, including Ventura, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego, allow some workers to make more in retirement than they did while working. The coffers are underfunded by millions of dollars.

Lawmakers believed their program would be the first in which a state government established a retirement program for workers in the private sector. Several issues remain unsettled, such as whether California taxpayers would ever be on the hook if future investment returns failed to meet projections.

Throwing a political curveball, Republican lawmakers lined up behind Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to overhaul public pensions, and called on Democrats to support the leader of their party.

The payment falls, at a time most pension costs are rising, because a $404 million payment to CalPERS for California State University pensions is shifted from the state budget to CSU.

The California Senate leader said he intends to address all 12 points of a pension overhaul proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, but added, "That doesn't mean we're going to do every point in the way he suggests." Brown's plan includes raising the retirement age to 67 for most new employees outside the public sector and replace defined-benefit pensions with a "hybrid" system combining a smaller defined-benefit plan with Social Security and a 401(k)-style benefit.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest public pension in the U.S. with $230 billion of assets, agreed last month to allow the state to delay making a $527 million payment until April to cover state worker benefits.

Many state pension systems are in shambles, and states face the problem of being accountable for the promises made to their residents in the state's highest legal document and balancing their budget for the present and in the future.

Document that outlines ten steps to return California to prosperity.

Proposals to tax Internet retail sales are all the rage as states continue to look for more ways to balance their budgets in the face of revenue shortfalls.

Detailing how the state's public pension system broke and how to fix it.

Article explaining that if spending on state bonds could be suspended for a year, $5.45 billion could be sliced from that $20 billion deficit and arguing that special itnerests should not be permitted to put bonds on the ballot.

Paper suggesting a variety of ways to fixing state budgets in crisis, including freezing or slowing public employee salary growth, privatizing infrastructure and state operations, eliminating prevailing wage and placing constitutional limits on taxing and spending.

The unions' political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state's public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation's and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination-high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes-has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

Paper arguing for an alternate form of fiscal discipline, known as Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO), which combines strategic planning, zero-based budgeting and performance budgeting in a workable, common-sense package.. BFO would help the governor and/or legislature, in California as it has in other states, build the budget in a way that delivers the results citizens want at a price they are willing to pay.

With a correctional system strained by severe overcrowding, a state fiscal crisis and a recent federal order to reduce the prison population by over 40,000 inmates, there are no silver bullet solutions to California's prison crisis, but this paper presents the option of a public-private partnership to lower prison operating costs and deliver additional inmate beds to address the severe overcrowding.

The CalPERS board raised the annual state payment for state worker pensions $213 million to a total of $3.7 billion, rejecting Gov. Brown's request for a bigger increase to avoid a "loan" costing "$145.9 million over the next 20 years."

It's been 12 months since Gov. Jerry Brown announced his proposals to reform the public pension system, yet action on his 12-point plan that increases the retirement age has been slow.

A string of recent high profile public official corruption cases have brought the topic of pension forfeiture to the debate roundtable.

California's great public pension battles are heating up, and may be headed for some kind of political explosion.

Twenty California counties, including Ventura, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego, allow some workers to make more in retirement than they did while working. The coffers are underfunded by millions of dollars.

Lawmakers believed their program would be the first in which a state government established a retirement program for workers in the private sector. Several issues remain unsettled, such as whether California taxpayers would ever be on the hook if future investment returns failed to meet projections.

Throwing a political curveball, Republican lawmakers lined up behind Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to overhaul public pensions, and called on Democrats to support the leader of their party.

The payment falls, at a time most pension costs are rising, because a $404 million payment to CalPERS for California State University pensions is shifted from the state budget to CSU.

The California Senate leader said he intends to address all 12 points of a pension overhaul proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, but added, "That doesn't mean we're going to do every point in the way he suggests." Brown's plan includes raising the retirement age to 67 for most new employees outside the public sector and replace defined-benefit pensions with a "hybrid" system combining a smaller defined-benefit plan with Social Security and a 401(k)-style benefit.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest public pension in the U.S. with $230 billion of assets, agreed last month to allow the state to delay making a $527 million payment until April to cover state worker benefits.

This all boils down to who gets to pick taxpayers' pockets first, public pensioners or municipal bond investors? More people are waking up to the hard reality that when it comes to state and local government, somebody has to lose money over the next few decades. The National Association of Bond Lawyers is worried enough about it to issue "Considerations" for advising clients who think they're getting safe investments.

Despite an organized campaign to stop public pension reform, reality is beginning to break through.  One recent report outlines a possible path to long-term solutions and another details the necessity of states and municipalities finding their own way because federal bailout is impossible.  And Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a plan that could have been based on both reports.

Hey, young public employees, what are you going to do when your pension checks bounce after you paid in for decades? That is what will happen in many - maybe all - states and municipalities sooner or later if they do not reform right now. If you want to see the future, just look at Illinois. One citizen there did, and came up with a real reform plan that might work.

Public employees should take their pension money now and run to avoid risk of getting reduced benefits - or nothing - in the future. It's the best deal for them and for taxpayers. A growing chorus of credible voices including the Government Accountability Office, a Federal Reserve bank and now the Harvard Kennedy School Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government confirm state and local government finances are "spiraling out of control" and even draconian reforms only make it "more likely" that future benefits will paid in full.

Hey, young public employees, what are you going to do when your pension checks bounce after you paid in for decades? That is what will happen in many - maybe all - states and municipalities sooner or later if they do not reform right now. If you want to see the future, just look at Illinois. One citizen there did, and came up with a real reform plan that might work.

This is what it sounds like when the Federal Reserve Bank screams: "Much has been written about the various headwinds restraining economic activity over the near term. However, our economy also has other headwinds to confront over the medium- to-longer-term. ... the finances of some state and local governments are also under stress and in need of serious adjustments."  - Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Sandra Pianalto

The new compromise, titled the "Schools and Local Public Safety Protection Act of 2012," pitches itself exclusively as a "Millionaire's Tax" despite retaining the aspects of Brown's original plan that would hit far more than California's top earners.

A string of recent high profile public official corruption cases have brought the topic of pension forfeiture to the debate roundtable.

The Los Angeles City Council's Budget and Finance Committee took its first step toward a performance-based budgeting system starting with the Planning Department and the Bureau of Street Lighting last Tuesday.

As state lawmakers struggle to close budget gaps and reduce deficits, many are scrambling to find new sources of revenue, often in the form of new taxes. To bolster revenue, states like Texas and Illinois are honing in on a new type of tax, a "skin" tax, aimed at strip clubs in the state.

On February 14^th, we celebrate love, family, and our partners. When it comes to celebrating partners, state governments have a number of Valentines. Because state governments continue to award the sweetest deals to their sweethearts, big business, they are never alone in love on Valentine's Day.

In the face of strong national consumer spending and private sector employment gains, State Controller John Chiang released California’s December financial statement showing the General Fund is running a staggering cash deficit of $21 billion on an $88.5 billion budget. This imploding financial condition is a reflection of how California’s high businesses taxes and excessive regulations are accelerating the trend of businesses abandoning the state.

The question since June has not been whether or not California would realize an extra $4 billion in revenue, thus avoiding a slate of automatically triggered budget cuts, but rather how much it would fall short.

Gov. Jerry Brown's Executive Order B-13-11 name-drops several reforms that could help implement this understanding, such as zero-based budgeting and performance measure implementation. But in sum, it seems like a way of treating separate symptoms instead of an overarching infection. In this way, it complements the sentiments expressed in Brown's performance-based budget veto message.

Unable to extend higher taxes in the 2011 legislative session, California Governor Jerry Brown is set to propose two new tax hiking measures for the November, 2012 ballot. The increases include both an extra half-cent on the sales tax as well as the income tax for individuals making over $250,000.

Facing $400 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, California Govenor Jerry Brown has laid out a 12 point proposal to reform the state's sytem.

Decision making is best informed when all options are on the table; in other words, when all spending priorities can be measured against one another as parts of a whole.

After reform unanimously passes the State Legislature, the future of California's budget process is up to Governor Jerry Brown.

California's leaders are having trouble choosing who will be hit with 2012 tax hiking ballot initiatives. 

A four-part series examining the cuts to higher education funding in California, and the simple ways in which the cuts could have been avoided or the pain minimized. If anyone had the guts to do so, of course.

A four-part series examining the cuts to higher education funding in California, and the simple ways in which the cuts could have been avoided or the pain minimized. If anyone had the guts to do so, of course.

California state revenues are already coming in shy of the state budget's overly optimistic projections.

A four-part series examining the cuts to higher education funding in California, and the simple ways in which the cuts could have been avoided or the pain minimized. If anyone had the guts to do so, of course.

Late Tuesday night, the California legislature passed its FY 2012 state budget that relies mainly on steep spending cuts to close the approximately $10-billion dollar gap in the $90-billion dollar general fund budget.

Weekly of review of union rallies held around the country.

Unions from California to Pennsylvania organized events to protest state budget cuts and rally for jobs in what was a very busy week full of union activity around the country.

State legislatures are still working out the logistics to make the July 1 budget deadline. The states on the West Coast are working on getting their finances in some semblance of order, while those on the East Coast are still struggling to balance their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year.

It's that time of year again; one by one, states are passing their budgets for the next fiscal year. Shortfalls still loom for some while others have used a variety of tools to balance their books. Some states have taxed, others have cut, and still others have just gotten creative with their accounting.

Is the bankruptcy option for states an effective tool to address the looming state fiscal crises?

We're still a long way from reform, but the more the public learns of abuses the more supportive it may become of real reform.

So many reasons... which one is real?

Fiscal stress and strain continues in the fifty states this week as more legislators look for ways out of the black holes in which they find themselves. Solutions sought by states include delayed retirement, increased pension contributions, and furloughs.