Attempting to rekindle his image as a bipartisan populist, Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday urged cooperation among lawmakers
and proposed a sweeping $222 billion public works program that
would require the largest bond package in state history.
Associated Press
Sacramento – Attempting to rekindle his image as a bipartisan populist, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday urged cooperation among lawmakers and proposed a sweeping $222 billion public works program that would require the largest bond package in state history.
The governor’s annual State of the State speech addressed issues basic to the lives of most Californians, including more funding for public schools, rebuilding freeways and transit systems, improving air quality and raising the minimum wage.
He asked Californians to move beyond a year filled with acrimony over the special election he had called and devoid of significant political accomplishment.
“I have absorbed my defeat. I have learned my lesson. And the people, who always have the last word, sent a clear message – cut the warfare, cool the rhetoric, find common ground and fix the problems together,” Schwarzenegger said.
The vision Schwarzenegger laid out in the 20-minute speech proposed a bold program for rebuilding the state’s aging freeways, bridges, schools and flood-control systems.
Local lawmakers gave the speech mostly positive reviews, but questioned the plausibility of plan that calls for $222.6 billion in public works improvements over 20 years to be paid in part by $68 billion in new general obligation bonds. The bonds would go before voters in a series of elections between 2006 and 2014.
“I think he made some good proposals about what we need to do to invest in the long-term future of California, but we have to look at how he intends to pay for it,” Gilroy’s Democratic Assembly member, Simón Salinas, said. “He was trying to recapture the sense of visionary who wants to tackle these problems. … he can talk all he wants about not raising taxes, but there are some real needs here.”
Salinas said he was disappointed to not hear a proposal to help build more affordable housing and worried that the bulk of the state’s investments will be in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, leaving out the state’s large swaths of rural lands.
Assembly Budget Committee Chairman John Laird, D- Santa Cruz, called the address “the speech of a Republican governor who got drubbed in the special election and is learning from it.”
He agreed that bond measures will unduly stress the state’s budget and that governor left out projects vital to the state’s future.
“The general direction was good, but he left out libraries, parks, housing and water quality. We want to add those to the bond package,” Laird said, adding that new port and water fees could be used to fund port and levee projects.
The governor pledged that his plan would ensure fiscal prudence for a state that grappled with multibillion dollar budget deficits before he took office in 2003. One aspect of his “Strategic Growth Plan” would constitutionally cap debt payments, limiting them to no more than 6 percent of the state’s general fund revenue.
It was his first statewide speech since voters rejected all four of his ballot measures on Nov. 8.
His proposed budget for the 2006-07 fiscal year is expected to include $4.3 billion more for public schools and a freeze in university fees. A predicted $5.2 billion in extra, unanticipated tax revenue next fiscal year gives the governor a welcome boost.
He also has proposed a $1-an-hour raise over two years in the state’s minimum wage.
*Staff writer Matt King contributed to this report.
