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Store Research

What is Old is New Again, Budget-wise

January 20, 2011

Some bill research does not include the Governor's file because at the time we researched the bill, the sitting Governor had not released his chaptered bill file. If the Governor's file is not included with this particular research, please contact our office (1-530-666-1917 or quote@legintent.com) and we will be happy to provide this file at no charge if it is available. Please Note: Governor files did not exist prior to 1943.

Newly-re-elected California Governor Jerry Brown recently observed in his inaugural address that he reviewed past California Governor’s Inaugural Messages and found it was “sobering and enlightening to read through the inaugural addresses of past governors.  They each start on a high note of grandeur and then focus on virtually the same recurring issues – education, crime, budgets, water.”

At LIS, we have collected these early California Governor’s Messages from as far back as 1850 when the state was first admitted to the Union.  In this and the following blogs, we survey some of these earlier Governor’s Messages as they related to state budget issues, beginning with Governor Peter H. Burnett’s December 21, 1850 address to the Senate and Assembly:

   The grave and delicate subject of revenue is one to which I would call your particular attention.  From the best estimate I have been enabled to make, the current expenses of the State Government for the first year will reach half a million of dollars; but most probably will exceed that sum.  This large amount can be raised only in two modes—either by loan or by taxation.  The first of these modes is objectionable on many accounts . . . when a State borrows money to defray the ordinary expenses of her civil administration; because she bequeaths a debt to posterity, without any means to pay it. . . .

   The only available and just mode of procuring the indispensable means of supporting the State government is by a system of direct taxation; the most fair, simple, and just mode of taxation ever resorted to. . . .