March 2008 Quarterly Meeting Wrap-Up

The March 21 Quarterly Meeting was a great success as 50 participants
created a state budget reflecting our coalition’s social equity values. In the end, we developed a budget that had a
$3.5 Billion deficit- almost half of the actual 2006-2007 budget deficit ($6.2
Billon).

Unlike Gov. Schwarzenegger, the Bay Area SEC team didn’t cut
any essential services. We increased
K-12 Education by 44% and chose to expand Medi-Cal and Healthy Families
services and we increased unemployment benefits and job training programs. We instituted a carbon tax which supplemented
low-income people and alternative energy efforts. We closed the loophole of
Proposition 13 to allow local governments to reassess property value more
often. To add $5 Billion to the state budget, we reinstituted the Vehicle
License Fee, which Schwarzenegger repealed as his first act as governor.

We also made common-sense decisions on the revenue side:
increase the income tax on upper-income people to gather $2.4 Billion rather
than cancelling critical services and Cost-of-Living increases to disabled
Californians just to save a few million.
Finally, we identified next steps for member
organizations to respond to the immediate budget process, and to play a role in
promoting long-term statewide budget reform.

Sarah Henry of Next 10's California Budget Challenge and Lenny Goldberg of California
Tax Reform Association
teamed up to facilitate this dynamic exercise.
Next Ten will be following up in the coming weeks with a smaller group
to incorporate member feedback around the framing and content of various policy
options, and CTRA will be reaching out later this year to involve the coalition
in a campaign focused on changing the formula for commercial property assessment
under Proposition 13.

Next 10 has provided a detailed list of the questions and
the responses from our meeting, available here. (PDF, 5.8MB)

This Quarterly Meeting was also the first in which we’ve
incorporated a “Movement
Building” activity into
the agenda, a feature we’ll be devoting more time in the coming months. Pam Graybeal, Urban Habitat’s Education &
Training Coordinator, concluded with an activity where people challenged their
artistic skills to share perceptions and stereotypes of our potential partners in
the movement for social equity – to see the drawings and read more about this great activity, read the write-up.

Be sure to mark your calendars for the rest of the 2008’s Quarterly
Meetings at the East Bay Community Foundation:
June 20
September 5
December 5