$2 billion is cut from state budget

By Evan Halper

Feb. 15, 2008 12 AM PT

An Assembly panel Thursday voted to trim $2 billion from California’s budget, with cuts to education, healthcare and other programs.

The move by the Assembly Budget Committee follows a similar vote Wednesday in the state Senate. The full Legislature is expected to vote on the cuts today in the lawmakers’ first action to rein in the state’s $14.5-billion deficit.

The reductions are in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s declaration of a fiscal emergency last month.

In the early cuts package, schools would lose $400 million. Reimbursements to doctors who provide subsidized care for the poor would be cut by 10%.

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Evan Halper

Evan Halper is a former staff writer who wrote about a broad range of policy issues out of Washington, D.C., with particular emphasis on how Washington regulates, agitates and very often miscalculates in its dealings with California. Before heading east, he was the Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Sacramento, where he spent a decade untangling California’s epic budget mess and political dysfunction.

$2 billion is cut from state budget

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