State of California Department of Finance

As of this morning, the State of California has no budget for FY2009. Instead of checks, the state government will start issuing IOU's. There are probably a lot of different issues but basically we spend much more (~$24 billion) than we take in. During the fat years, the state spent all the extra tax revenue, including adding lots of entitlement programs. However, now that we're in a financial crisis, the Democrats won't reduce spending and Republicans won't approve tax increases. To me, this just further validates my feeling that Democrats use other people's (tax) money to stay in power.

One thing that amazed me was the people in charge of the state finance department. All of them are political insiders, having worked in government for a long time. Perhaps we should get some people from the real world, where you go out of business if you can't budget, to help them. Sigh... you can tell by the lack of finance professionals in the finance executive staff that the annual state budget is not a finance exercise but a political one.

Director: Michael Genest
Master's degree in Public Policy
No private industry finance experience

Chief Deputy Director, Budget: Ana Matosantos
Bachelor's degree in Political Science
No private industry finance experience

Chief Deputy Director, Policy: Thomas Sheehy
MBA!
Some experience at TIAA-CREF

Chief Operating Officer: Fred Klass
Master's degree in Public Administration
Bachelor's degree in Political Science
No private industry finance experience

Deputy Director for External Affairs: H.D. Palmer
University of Maryland College of Journalism
No private industry finance experience

Deputy Director, Legislation: Miriam B. Ingenito
Master's degree in Public Policy
No private indusstry finance experience

Special Counsel, Jennifer Rockwell
Worked in state government since 1999
Why is she here and not in the legal department?

Seven people and only one with some professional finance work experience in the private sector or even a finance education (but he's deputy director of policy). It seems to be top heavy with Public Policy, Public Administration, and Political Science types... including the deputy director of budget. Figures that they can't produce a real budget. Do they have any work performance goals at all? At least the next level of managers have finance experience.

I've worked in corporate finance for almost 15 years. If I had to put together an Executive Staff team, it would not look like this. However, my goal would be to produce a balanced budget and set up controls to help other departments manage their spending. I don't think those are the goals of the State of California Department of Finance.