Brown pushes tax hike as California's money woes deepen

[No Elephants]

Another Democrat who had to take over from a POS.

By Jim Christie

SAN FRANCISCO | Sun May 13, 2012 8:06pm EDT

(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown was elected in 2010 on a promise to fix the state's chronic fiscal crisis. His weekend announcement of a much bigger-than-expected shortfall in the state budget signals how far he still has to go.

In an unusual move that underscored the highly politicized nature of the state budget, Brown took to YouTube on Saturday to deliver the bad news: the state's projected budget deficit for the fiscal year starting July 1 is now $16 billion, up from the $9 billion anticipated in January.

The Democratic governor also warned of further cuts to an already-battered public education system if voters rejected a tax increase in a ballot initiative this fall.

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California, whose economy is the largest in the nation and would rank ninth in the world if the state were a country, has struggled for decades with a tax system in which property tax increases are limited by law and tax hikes of any kind must be approved by voter initiatives or a two-thirds vote of the legislature.

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(Reporting By Jim Christie. Editing by Jonathan Weber, William Schomberg, Tiziana Barghini and Paul Simao)

Prop 13 strikes again.

New flash. Goods and services cost money, prices rise and cutting on public education and poor people gets you only so far.