October 28, 2008
Governor To Call Special Legislative Session
The Governor has announced he will call a special session of the California State Legislature in November. The purpose of the special session will be to pass a new budget for the current fiscal year, 2008-2009.
As you know the legislature passed a budget for fiscal 2008-2009 just last month. However, almost immediately, there was word that the budget was off balance by at least three billion dollars. In other words, projected income was $3 billion less than expected expenses under the new budget.
The Governor now says the expected shortfall is much worse. He has not said by how much. However, Senator Perata says he thinks the shortfall may be as much as $10 billion.
When the Governor calls the special session, legislators will be given the task of writing a new budget that eliminates the expected losses. To do that, legislators will have to cut expenses, increase revenue (taxes), or both.
The Republicans will fight tooth and nail against tax increases, so there will be immense pressure to cut spending, including cuts to programs that are critical to health and survival of many thousands of Californians. These programs help people on limited income, help people living with HIV/AIDS or other life threatening diseases, help people buy their medications, protect people from domestic abuse, or help them just put food on the table.
The bottom line is that we will need to get busy again in November and December. I had hoped to have time off in those two months. Probably you had as well. But, if we want to save valuable programs that will be under attack during the special legislative session, we will need to be burying the legislature with E-mails during that time.
I am sorry to have to ask this of you, but I hope you will prepare yourself to join this critical effort in the next two months. And please tell all your friends about the critical work we are doing. Get them to join the effort by visiting our web site at:
They will find a link at the bottom of every page of the web site that they can use to sign up to get our E-mail alerts.
The more people sending mail to legislators, in response to our E-mail alerts, the more effective we will be.
I hope to have a new, easier to use, E-mail response process up and running by the time we must get to work in November.
Love,
Boyce Hinman
California Communities United Institute
