This year’s budget balancing tool is sleek and easy to navigate, but the challenge itself is a difficult task. With a $15.7 billion starting deficit, the introduction of voter propositions, and the ability to see how your decisions would affect California citizens in real-time, the challenge is much harder than at first glance. This, however, is all part of Next 10’s effort to make the tool resemble the real process of creating the 2012-2013 California state budget.
Listen to KNX 1070 news anchors Dick Helton and Vicky Moore's interview with Next 10 Founder Noel Perry. This radio segment focused on ideas people have been submitting to solve the state's budget crisis.
The Governor has signed the state's budget, but the final word on this year's budget actually lies with the voters—not lawmakers this year. Voters will decide through a November ballot initiative whether to raise $8.5 billion through increases to the state's income tax for California's highest earners and the sales tax. If that initiative fails at the polls, it will trigger cuts to schools and other programs to fill the gap. [...] Next 10's online California Budget Challenge (www.budgetchallenge.org) has just been updated so that Californians can tell state leaders in advance of the November election how they feel this final budget question should be answered.
As Californians grapple with further draconian cuts to education and social services as the deficit soars – again – to $16 billion, a budgetary bright spot has appeared on the horizon: the billions of dollars in revenues that will be generated once a state carbon market launches later this year.
As California policymakers discuss how to spend revenue generated by the state’s soon-to-be-launched carbon market, four related studies providing legal and economic analysis of different investment scenarios were released late Wednesday.
Starting later this year, California's cap-and-trade system to fight global warming will generate billions of dollars in revenue, as companies buy and sell permits to produce greenhouse gases. How should the money be used?
