Anger follows California budget crisis deal

Anger over proposals to solve California's budget crisis are mounting as reports said the plan would see thousands of prisoners released and billions slashed from education spending.

The Los Angeles Times reported on its website that the budget deal, announced by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and bipartisan lawmakers on Monday, would involve the early release of thousands of inmates.

The Times said the reduction would be achieved through a combination of measures including allowing prisoners to finish their sentences on home detention and creating incentives for completion of rehabilitation plans.

The prison inmate proposal would help save the state 1.2 billion dollars in the coming fiscal year, the Times reported.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca meanwhile condemned the budget, saying other cuts to local government would force authorities across the state to shut down jails or slash officers from street patrol.

"I think it is one thing to have a natural disaster... but it is another thing to have local cities and counties hit by a disaster predicated on the irresponsible actions of the state legislators," Baca told the Times.

California's fiscal woes have deepened as the state reels under the effects of the recession, which have sent unemployment and home foreclosures soaring and state revenues plunging to levels not seen since the 1990s.

The budget crisis pushed the state to the brink of bankruptcy and forced California to start paying its bills with IOUs earlier this month.

The details of the budget -- designed to plug a 26.3-billion-dollar gap in California's finances -- have not been formally released. The budget plan is to be put before lawmakers in Sacramento for approval on Thursday.

However public employees and local governments voiced opposition to the proposed budget on Tuesday as details began to filter out.

Monday's deal reportedly allows for some 15 billion dollars in spending cuts, including slashing around nine billion dollars from schools, community colleges and state university programs.

It also cuts around 1.3 billion dollars from a state health care program for the poor as well some 124 million dollars from a scheme to provide health insurance to more than 900,000 children in low-income households.

"The budget revision that we are going to be voting on contains painful solutions for all Californians," California Assembly speaker Karen Bass said.

Although Democratic legislators have insisted future spending will return to previous levels when California's economy improves, sceptical union leaders urged the state assembly to reject the budget.

The leader of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) responded to the budget with dismay.

"The priorities are wrong. Massive cuts to all levels of education while, at the same time, preserving unproductive corporate tax breaks, is a blueprint for further California decline," CFT President Marty Hittelman said.

The leader of the 340,000-strong California Teachers Association, David Sanchez, called on legislators to pass the budget to allow educators to plan for the future.

But Sanchez acknowledged that the cuts would see students return to school to find "fewer teachers, fewer course offerings and fewer resources."

"Class sizes will be painfully larger and many art, music, career technical education and other vital programs are gone," Sanchez said.

Analysts meanwhile noted that the budget included accounting tactics which would defer costs to the following fiscal year, something Schwarzenegger had earlier this year decried as "kicking the can down the alley."

Daniel J. B. Mitchell, professor at the University of California Los Angeles, said there was no quick fix to the state's budget woes.

"We keep squeezing and chopping away but each year we're incurring debt in one way or another for each time we run through this cycle," he told AFP.

"This budget proposal did kick the can down the alley.... There's all kinds of de facto borrowing built in to this and borrowing means you take the money now and pay it later."