How will California's elected officials spend responsibly?

That's a trick question, folks. When politicians have money to burn - as in next year's state budget surplus - the temptation is to resume spending the old-fashioned way: Recklessly and irrationally. But in laying out the latest budget plan. Gov. Brown is sticking to his old penny-pinching self. Matter of fact, he's proposing $1.3 billion less in general fund spending than what was first laid out in January. That means no new funding for most of the social service programs that took big cuts in previous budget years. "The money is not there," Brown said. "Anyone who thinks there is spare change around has not read the budget." If the governor has his way, much of the money will go to schools in poor communities. While the surplus is now running at about $4.5 billion, budget officials expect that number to drop to $2.8 billion by the end of June. Even so, Brown faces considerable pushback in the Democratic-controlled legislature, where lawmakers are looking to restore a wide array of safety-net programs. The sensible answer is to reexamine those programs to see how they could be run more efficiently (i.e. cheaper). But that takes time and would put too many noses out of joint. What's the political upside in doing that? From the LAT:

In announcing the revised blueprint, the governor focused on school funding, a central part of his plan. He wants to send more money to districts that serve large numbers of poor students and non-native English speakers than to wealthier areas, while giving all of them more flexibility in how they spend state dollars. "I think it's fair. I think it's just," Brown said. "I think it has great moral force." The governor's January plan, containing many of the same elements, stirred controversy immediately. But Brown has budged in only a few areas. For example, he still wants to make counties pay more for social welfare services, but he now says that change can be phased in over several years. And he will keep pushing to tie new state funding for universities to certain performance benchmarks, but he dropped a proposal to increase tuition for students who take excessive courses.