Dan Walters: Truth on budget numbers hard to come by
By Dan Walters - dwalters@
sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, July 20, 2008
Perusing the state budget is not unlike accompanying Alice on her
plunge down a rabbit hole into Wonderland.
Even a reasonably sophisticated Californian who seeks some hard data
on the state's fiscal situation finds himself, like Alice, in a world
where up is down, down is up, and what appears to be true is often
false.
We are routinely force-fed numbers from those who have a political
interest in making them add up a certain way. And the more they assure
us that they're not using any gimmicks, the more suspicious we become.
Borrowed money is counted as revenue, payments due in one fiscal year
are magically transported into another year, income is inflated,
liabilities are minimized, increases in spending are characterized as
cuts, and accounting is constantly shifted between cash and accrual
bases.