“Christmas is when Santa gives kids presents their parents pay for. Deficits are when Santa gives parents presents their kids pay for,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe told Redondo Beach Rotarians during a luncheon talk two weeks ago at the Blue Water Grill.
The comment, which Knabe credited to former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm, came during an uncharacteristically downbeat talk from the usually upbeat supervisor, a 40-year member of Optimist International.
“We all know service is better at the local level, but only if there’s money for it,” Knabe said in response to Governor Jerry Brown’s recent budget proposal to “realign” state and local government responsibilities, including prisoner housing.
Knabe noted that Los Angeles County’s over crowded jails already have 28,000 prisoners, the largest prison population of any county in the nation. Brown’s proposal could send the county another 13,000 prisoners to house.
He also noted that in 2009, the county “plugged $750 million in [budget] holes created by the state,” and that county departments cut their budgets by an average of 17 percent while the state was increasing spending.
Despite the cutbacks, he said, the county is facing a $350 shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year.
“It’s all about jobs, and we’re going through a jobless recovery,” he noted.
Knabe said he is hoping the county’s 12 percent unemployment rate will be brought down, in part, by the so-called 30-10 plan, which would compress 30 years of publicly funded transportation improvements into 10 years. He noted that Redondo has received from federal stimulus funds for solar panels on the North Redondo bike path, improvements on the Esplanade and beach bike path and a new Harbor Department building.
Responding to a question from the audience, Knabe compared plans for high speed rail in the Central Valley to Alaska’s “Bridge to nowhere.”
“If there’s not a major metropolitan destination at either end it doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Asked about Governor Brown’s suggestion that the popular Proposition 13 be modified, Knabe said, “I was startled to hear him say it. Maybe, at his age, he just wants to be a one term governor.”
Prior to his talk Rotary District Governor Doug Baker presented Knabe with the Paul Harris Rotarian Fellowship award for public service. ER
