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'Legislators Will Forfeit Pay,' Says State Controller
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After reviewing the budget passed last week by the California legislature, State Controller John Chiang found that it was unbalanced, and that legislators will therefore forfeit their pay and living expenses. In a statement, Chiang said that “My office’s careful review of the recently-passed budget found components that were miscalculated, miscounted or unfinished. The numbers simply did not add up, and the Legislature will forfeit their pay until a balanced budget is sent to the Governor.”
The forfeiting of pay is a result of Proposition Proposition 25, titled the “On-Time Budget Act of 2010,” which was passed in 2010. Prop 25 states that unless a balanced budget is passed, legislators won't get paid.
This iteration of the budget was in fact vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown on June 16, so the review by Chiang was to determine whether or not the legislators had met the terms of Prop 25.
Chiang added that his review had nothing to do with the content of the budget, or with his own opinion about the measures therein.
“While the vetoed budget contains solutions of questionable achievability [sic] and some to which I am personally opposed, current law provides no authority for my office to second-guess them in my enforcement of Proposition 25,” he said. “My job is not to substitute my policy judgment for that of the Legislature and the Governor, rather it is to be the honest-broker of the numbers.”
The budget was short by $1.85 billion; it laid out $89.75 billion in spending, but only $87.9 billion in revenues.
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