May Revise–Little Change for Education, Despite More Than a Billion in New State Revenues

Education, despite being the largest program in the state’s budget, received a relatively small share of the new state revenues in Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2005 May Revise budget proposal.In fact, the Governor is taking credit for leaving Proposition 98 funding for 2005-06 at the same level as proposed in January, even though the minimum guarantee has fallen by $509 million. But that drop in the Proposition 98 minimum guarantee is an artifact of the Governor’s refusal to allocate more funding for 2004-05 to honor his $2 billion “Deal”–last year’s agreement to suspend Proposition 98 funding but limit the cut to $2 billion. Had that deal been honored, Proposition 98 funding would be higher than the level proposed in the May Revise by about $1.8 billion in 2004-05 and by about $1.4 billion in 2005-06. Read the rest of this entry »