The committee approved the move of selling a portion of the State Compensation Insurance Fund (SCIF), but a legislative analyst has said such a complicated sale would be "very unlikely" to provide financial relief within a year.
In his 2009-10 May Revision General Fund Proposals, Schwarzenegger proposed seeking "a private entity to purchase a portion of SCIF's book of business, with the SCIF remaining as the insurer of last resort."
Schwarzenegger's plan also includes $1 billion in Medi-Cal cuts that would require a federal waiver. But without the waiver in hand, "you shouldn't be counting the savings," complained Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a member of the joint committee.
These proposed plans are part of a Democrat-driven plan, which on paper reduces the state deficit by $23.2 billion and contains $7.2 billion in bookkeeping maneuvers. Moves to account for billions more are one-time fixes, are sure to be challenged in court or are grounded in rosy assumptions that the Legislature's own fiscal advisors say are unlikely to materialize.