Fresh from a post-election vacation, Brown met with state finance officials, who briefed him on the education budget. Brown called the state's 25 billion dollar deficit "enormous and unprecedented" and said he's looking for ideas to close the gap:
"The challenge is to get all the significant players, all the people who have a stake in government to stand, to belly up to the bar and give me their ideas and take responsibility for how California's going to solve its problems."
Governor Schwarzenegger has called an emergency budget session
for early next month to deal with part of the deficit. Brown
called that a "great opportunity," and pointed out that there is
only one Governor at a time. Finance officials will continue
to brief Brown over the next few weeks about the state's budget
situation. The Governor-Elect is expected to unveil his own
proposal in early January.
