There are a couple of ways here to cut a lot of cost out of the budget without necessarily costing jobs. 1) Illegals need to lose all benefits paid by the state. We shouldn’t be paying for anything other than emergency services and that goes so far as stabilizing the patient and getting them out.
2) We are in a deflationary environment that is going to kill wealth and cost of living across the board. There should be a way to calibrate this to come to a successful calculation of cutting retirement/salary/legacy costs of state employees. They’re going to have to take a cramdown at some point and it’s better to keep jobs than just cut. Give the option to either cut salaries across the board at a rate equaling the deflation rate or cut double that rate on retirement benefits. It is very scalable and honestly with the cost of living in CA coming down by the day it’s better for staties to have jobs and be on par with Cost of Living than be totally without retirement or salary.
This won’t close the budget shortfalls but it would be a big step.
