Schwarzenegger is taking a leaf from President Bush's playbook of doing something to look like a "compassionate conservative" and then not actually funding it. He dramatically used executive powers (with only borderline legal authority) to shift state funds to localities to make up some of what they lost through his vehicle license fee cut.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown was one local Democratic leader who praised the governor's action. Now, after his gesture of bipartisanship and support for local government, Schwarzenegger has pulled a Bush and proposed in his 2004-5 budget to hack $1.3 billion from local governments. Brown was philosophical about the latest proposal:
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown said his city is already facing the prospect of cutting police and fire department staffing, and the property tax shift would make things worse.
"If we have to tighten our belts, we'll just do it," said Brown, a Democrat who was governor from 1975 to 1983. "We may not like it, but we recognize that we have to live within our means."
But Brown is also intensely aware of the stakes. After several years of improvement, Oakland's homicide rates spiked upward in 2002 and 2003. But in the last quarter of 2003, a notable improvement was evident. Brown intends to continue programs that provide more intensive police coverage in high-risk areas:
Mayor Jerry Brown, who has staked much of his political career in the city on controlling crime, also called the results [of the policing policy] "dramatically positive" -- although he conceded it's too early to tell whether that will last.
"We'll continue what we are doing," he said. "It looks like it's worth it, but there are no guarantees in this business."
Brown said he soon will take up the issue with the City Council of continued funding for the stepped-up policing. He said there should be a way to fund it, at least temporarily, without other cuts.
"We are squeezing this out of the budget somehow," he said.
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