California’s Budget Crisis

The Times recognized in its editorial (“Budget Clock Winds Down,” Aug. 6) that the budget crisis has forced small vendors to the brink of ruin. California relies on small businesses to provide our prisons, hospitals and nursing facilities with supplies. As long as there is no budget, the vendors are not being paid. The result is obvious. The vendors are unable to pay their own bills and in an effort to keep afloat are laying off workers. The fiasco feeds on itself as employees seek government benefits and the tax base of the state is reduced.

There is a reasonable, sensible solution to the problem confronting the vendors. It does not resolve the budget crisis, but it goes a long way toward lessening some of the pain. We need to establish a state priority that will pay those vendors with the money that is available in the General Fund, special funds and non-governmental cost funds. There is a proposal before the Legislature that would authorize the state controller, upon approval of the Department of Finance, to pay claims until the Budget Act of 1992 is enacted.

The state must make good on what it owes. It is wrong for a bureaucratic stalemate to endanger the businesses of vendors who have upheld their end of the bargain.

RUSTY AREIAS

Assembly, D-Los Banos