New poll showing strong voter support for revised budget gives governor a boost - by John Fensterwald
Voter support is giving Gov. Jerry Brown a tailwind as he heads into negotiations over the state budget and school finance reform with the Legislature.
A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Californians continue to overwhelmingly back Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, even though superintendents of suburban districts are very unhappy with the share they’d get, and Democrats in the Senate and Assembly want to change parts of it. The poll found 77 percent of all respondents, 83 percent of public school parents and 87 percent of Democrats favored it after hearing a one-sentence description that said the LCFF would give each district more than it got this year and would funnel additional dollars to English learners and low-income students. Even a majority of Republicans (57 percent) supported it. The level of support was 6 percentage points higher than in April, even though Brown’s plan has received more scrutiny.
As for the overall state budget, Brown’s May revision was favored by a healthy 61 percent, with likely voters at 60 percent, Democrats at 74 percent and, perhaps surprisingly, Republicans at 49 percent. (The question included a one-sentence summary that said the budget would “increase spending on K-12 schools, higher education, health and human services, and corrections and rehabilitation, create a $1.1 billion reserve, and pay down the state’s debt” – a framing that advocates for restoring social services cuts would dispute.) The poll, taken of 1,704 adults, has a margin of error of 3.8 percent.Respondents also overwhelmingly endorsed a new idea in
