BISHOP JAIME SOTO'S 'SACRAMENTO BEE' OP-ED COLUMN TO THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE REGARDING PASSING THE STATE BUDGET..........

On Tuesday morning Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto authored an op-ed column in the Sacramento Bee, addressing the California Legislature's current 85-100 day overdue, failure to pass the State Budget.  The title of his op-ed column, "Failure to pass budget fails people", summarizes very well, the serious breakdown in state government that has repeatedly occurred for the past twenty years.  One of the chief annual responsibilities the Legislature bears constitutionally is to pass and send to the Governor a State Budget on or before, Midnight June 15.  The Governor is to review, blue pencil, sign, or veto, the Budget, by Midnight June 30, as  California's new Fiscal Year begins on July 1.  Thus today is the record setting 85th to 100th day of malfeasance on the part of the legislators in shirking their responsibility, either due to politics or a bankruptcy of answers to the fiscal crisis facing us in closing the budget deficit; and enacting a fair, just, balanced, plan of action for funding the needs of California in this Fiscal Year 2010-11.....Word emerged in the news media late this afternoon that Governor Schwarzenegger and the Big 5 Legislative Leaders, may have struck upon  a framework for a budget deal, to be voted on next Monday.  It's more than time before all Californians suffer further from this unnecessary governmental ineptitude.   And I mean not only state employees and vendors, but especially the poor, elderly, disabled, infirm, marginalized and the middle class.  Virtually all of our 38 million citizens, except for the comfortably wealthy and the perpetrators of the problem - the legislators.  Why their salaries, benefits, per diem, and perks, continue to flow to them during this travesty, while so many others suffer, is down right wrong.  As Catholic-Christians we must be prophetic advocates for resolving the intransigence and getting the new state budget enacted .....Then it is long overdue for Calfornians to constructively reform and resolve the generation long, political , institutional, and structural, breakdown in passing California budgets..........Legislators and Governor, Get Your Budget Responsibilities Completed NOW !!!!!!!!!!   Fr.  Troy