Jean Ross: Budgeteer

Sisyphus had better odds of getting that rock to the top of the hill than California seems to have of getting its fiscal act together. One woman -- first working under the Capitol dome and, since 1995, a couple of blocks from it -- has seen the budget grow and shrink and change and swim in black ink and red. Jean Ross worked for three Assembly committees until she took the job of first executive director of the independent California Budget Project, where she watchdogs the spend-while-you-cut budget hell captured on a New Yorker magazine cover she framed and keeps in her office. Ross’ zest for the budget and California governance, in all their wonky, wacky, labyrinthine detail, has made her a go-to green eyeshade for budgets past, present and -- should there actually be one -- future.

How did the budget get away from us? The disequilibrium seems enormous: outrageous spending, a lopsided tax structure. Where do you start?

Certainly there are different analyses, depending on what you see as the rightful role of government. And I come down on the side that government does have a legitimate and important role to play.

[The problems have] been exacerbated by the layers of different ballot measures that lock down pieces of money so that when you need to balance a budget, you have fewer and fewer options. After Prop. 13, what allowed local governments to recover was the fact that the state took [over] a much larger share of the cost of public schools. What you really had was a much smaller property tax pie. Lawmakers had to rewrite who got what slice of the pie.

Apropos of Proposition 13, people may not understand all the ramifications of it beyond the benefit to themselves.

I think you could debate how much voters understood. It gave us the two-thirds vote [requirement] for any tax increase at the state level, which I would argue was why California has had such a tough time, why we have had late budgets.

Have we been running on fumes and good credit for a while, then?

We ran on fumes and maybe not so good credit for most of the ‘90s. We were doing fine by ‘98, ‘99, but there were a few years mid-decade which were tough. Instead of really righting the ship, Gov. Schwarzenegger borrowed $15 billion, which we’re still paying off to the tune of about a billion and a half dollars a year, and will be for a long time. And he moved around property taxes, borrowed some, shifted transportation funds.

That’s the back-story, but the reason things are so horrendous today is the economy. The strong economic growth through the ‘80s and second half of the ‘90s, and whatever efficiencies were in the system, covered up the loss of revenue for a long time, and I think it’s hard to convince voters that what we’re seeing now, 33 years later, is the result of Prop. 13. When you have the cause and effect so separated, it’s tough.

How did you get interested in numbers? Did someone give you an abacus when you were a child?

I was the girl who liked math. Also the scientific method as a way to approach public policy questions. I’ve always had the head of a researcher and heart of an advocate. I believe that policy debates matter, that they ought to be based on facts. And I want to help people understand how things work by making important information accessible. My mother was a reporter. [My father was in] construction. Both of them are analytic.

Are you a Californian?

I was born in Pasadena. I grew up [in] the California dream, going to the beach while the rest of the nation was snowed in. I am a 100% product of California’s public education system from start to finish.

One of the things I like about our new-old governor is his [using] Carey McWilliams quotes. I’m a softie for Carey McWilliams quotes. I’ve gone back and pulled my “California: The Great Exception” from the shelf. It’s still as true today as when he wrote it.

Where does the “heart” part come in?

Caring deeply about California, caring about people who don’t have or are still struggling to achieve opportunities. My father didn’t go to college -- didn’t graduate from high school. I feel I am where I am because of the opportunities their generation gave me to go to the University of California, to have a world-class, affordable education that a lot of young people today don’t have.

You were a biochemistry major, then in grad school, economics. Some would say you went from a difficult discipline to a tedious one. You know what they say about economics ?

The dismal profession! But I’m interested in the applications. To me it’s how facts matter and how you use facts and analysis to understand the world.

You got your undergraduate degree at UC Santa Cruz, your master’s degree at Berkeley. Then what?

I spent 4 1/2 years in Washington [with the Service Employees International Union]. That’s where I learned to do budget analysis; a large part of what I did was analyze the finances of various cities, counties and states where they represented workers. Like most Californians, I couldn’t stay gone for long.

You had to come back to California, but did it have to be Sacramento?

[Laughs.] If you do this kind of research, national capitals, state capitals are where the best job opportunities are. And it’s halfway between the Sierra and San Francisco, which, when I ski one day and museum-hop the next, I always appreciate. You began working in the Legislature, on the staff of an Assembly committee, in 1989. What was it like in the capital then?

You felt your job was to present the facts -- here’s what this bill would do, here’s the policy issues to think about as you vote. It wasn’t a spin position.

I think there was more agreement over facts then and more awareness that people had different views about the role of tax policy in encouraging or discouraging economic growth.

There was much more of a collegial relationship between the houses, and between staff. People weren’t [saying] “I work for a Democrat,” “I work for a Republican.” It was just, do the job right.

And now?

I don’t think there’s that level of cooperation and collegiality. Certainly there is in some cases. You don’t oftentimes have staff with the same experience. You’ve seen an exodus of a lot of talent to lobbying, to the “third house,” which is what voters got [when they voted for term limits]. I’m old enough to believe that experience matters and that government is rocket science, or brain surgery. You can have the best people in the world in public office today and [because of term limits] they won’t have the time to gain that experience.

Yet people believe that when it comes to governing, anybody can do it.

Maybe that’s true in a New England town council but [not] in a state as complex as California, where you have decades of ballot measures that interact with one another in perverse ways, when you have complex relationships between the federal, state and local government -- it makes your head spin.

How has lobbying changed?

[There] certainly is more power for lobbyists because they become the institutional memory. You now have institutional memory on the outside. Personally, I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing, though it’s probably been good for my organization. The system works better when you have that institutional memory in government, where you’re accountable to voters.

Do legislators or staff call you about what happened long ago?

Frequently. If nothing else, it’s being at the same phone number for a long time!

Do you ever want to charge back into government?

No. I’m sort of dispositionally an outsider. What I love most about my job is I get to travel around the state and meet people. [Like at] a budget town hall in [San Francisco’s] South Bay, people who come out when it’s raining cats and dogs. I met with philanthropists in Los Angeles, school people in Humboldt County, people who care deeply about the future of California, who want things to work.

There are so many threads in this complicated budget fabric. Is there one change you think would make the most substantial difference?

I used to say the two-thirds [requirement] on the budget and taxing. Now we’ve changed the budget vote [to 55%]. [So] I would say changing the supermajority [vote requirement for taxes].

Politicians regardless of party don’t like to tax. It is always the strategy of last resort. But in the last decade, you had tax cuts as part of budget deals that also cut spending -- part of the “price” for getting the vote for those deals. And in 2009, we saw massive corporate tax cuts while lawmakers -- in one case in the same bill -- were increasing taxes on middle-income families. If you had a pure majority-rules system, you wouldn’t see that type of thing happen. We’ve been through recalls in California; if voters don’t like it, [they] have clear lines of accountability.

The California Budget Project is a nonprofit and required to be nonpartisan but often appears to wind up on the liberal side of matters.

There’s a difference between nonpartisan and having a point of view. We have an explicit mission of improving policies for low- and middle-income Californians. We [work] for policies, not politicians. We support and oppose ideas, not the people who care about them. I think there’s confusion over what it means to be “nonpartisan.”

We have an absolutely rigorous fact-checking process. You have to be doubly, triply precise and accurate with your facts. We have a fact-checking process -- I think it would probably rival the New Yorker!

The state budget that now is online used to be printed and bound in a huge volume. Do you miss that?

Some of us still wish we had it printed and nicely bound [rather] than having smoke come out of your copying machine when you try to print it all out! I’m old-fashioned in that regard. It makes an impact if you want to set a couple of [budgets] side by side and look over time. The flipside is, it’s easier for people all over the state to get a copy.

Any cuts that you think are no-brainers?

Elimination of enterprise zones. Elimination of the secretary of education. Some of the governor’s “symbolic” cuts: cellphones, vehicles, swag. And redevelopment.

The public gets tired of the chest-pounding over the budget; is it really like that behind the scenes, or is there more wheeling and dealing?

Probably some of both. And it depends, in part, by the tenor set at the top. I thought the governor’s appearance before the Legislature’s budget conference committee was a big step toward civility and reasoned dialogue in government. He went to the Leg on their turf; he was respectful, at times self-deprecating and most of all humorous. For those of us who believe the system can and should work, it was lovely.

patt.morrison@latimes.com

This interview was edited and excerpted from a longer taped transcript. Interview archive: latimes.com/pattasks.