This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Government Budgets Are Different: They Spend More Money**

Budget crisis? Spending cuts? What spending cuts? California is spending more than ever, despite citizens earning less and less.

Chances are that you’re one of the Californians who has had a pay cut over the past 4 years.  Indeed, per capita personal income in California, not adjusted for inflation, is still 3.2 percent below what it was in 2008 (http://www.dof.ca.gov/HTML/FS_DATA/LatestEconData/FS_Income.htm).

Since your income is down, you’ve had to cut back your spending, so instead of spending, say, $300/month for groceries, you’re down to spending $290, despite the price of groceries going up 6.2 percent in the past year alone, never mind other budget items.

Chances are you’ve given up dining out as much as you used to. You’re really thinking hard about if you can afford that road trip to see Grandma. You’ve certainly not bought that new car, and maybe your kids aren’t in soccer anymore.

Find out what's happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 Or maybe you’ve been hit even harder than that, been foreclosed on, drained your savings after a bout of unemployment, or lost money by keeping your business open through the lean years.

But Not Government

Find out what's happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.


With all this personal budget cutting and realignment in your lives, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the government has also. 

After all, we’ve all heard about teacher layoffs, municipal budget issues, the infamous California state budget deficit. So, surely, the government has been through tough times too, and has cut back while at the same time asking for a little more “sacrifice” on our parts, right?
 
Wrong.
 
The state of California is spending more than ever before. The County of Alameda is spending more than ever before. The city of San Leandro proposes to spend the same amount as it spent pre-crisis.  Sacrifice?  Only for you, not for them.
 
Let’s first look at the California budget.

Total spending has increased from $194.3 billion in 2007-2008 to $227.4 billion in 2010-2011, a 17 percent increase in the face of the average Californian’s income dropping 3.2% (http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/information/documents/CHART-...).

Even if you ignore the transfer of federal funds (just like ignoring the bottle of whiskey you just handed to your neighborhood alcoholic), the state managed to increase spending over 10 percent from $122.4 billion in 2008-2009 to $135.9 billion in 2010-2011, a level just 1.5 percent below the peak $138 billion spent, ex-federal funds, in 2007-2008.
 
And let’s not forget that this was after a multi-year orgy of spending increases, so that the state government is now spending 65 percent more than what it spent just 10 years ago, far outstripping the 27.5 percent income growth of California residents (and the 10 percent population growth).
 
Alameda County? Surely the County has suffered mightily, with the real estate crisis?  Not exactly.

The County spent $2.26 billion in 2007-2008 and in 2010-2011 it spent $2.44 billion, an 8 percent increase (http://www.acgov.org/budget/2010-11final_budget_summary.pdf) and (http://www.acgov.org/budget/2007-2008FinalBudget_Summary.pdf). 
 
And finally, our near and dear San Leandro.

Here it’s a bit more complex, as the city, county and state all send money back and forth to each other. But focusing on spending, we see that the proposed 2011-2012 General Fund budget is $71.8 million, almost exactly the same as 2006.  This amount is 54 percent higher than 2000, when population has grown about 5 percent in the interim. 
 
At all levels of government, the supposed cutbacks (if they actually exist) pale in comparison to the cutbacks made by the average citizen.  We have sacrificed much in the past few years.  It’s time our governments do the same. 
 
** Yes, shamelessly ripped off from the apocryphal Hemingway/Fitzgerald quote/counterquote about “the rich.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?