The May 19th special election has come and gone, but the state still must deal with an estimated $24.3 billion budget shortfall.

June 1, 2009 Assemblywoman Karen Bass Speaker, California State Assembly State Capitol, Room 219 Sacramento, CA 95814 Senator Darrell Steinberg President pro Tempore, California State Senate State Capitol, Room 205 Sacramento, CA 95814 Dear Speaker Bass and President pro Tempore Steinberg: In addressing this year’s budget crisis, you will be faced with heart wrenching decisions that will impact the lives of every Californian. The budget solutions that have been proposed balance the budget entirely on the backs of the most vulnerable in our state. We understand the magnitude and difficulty of the task you face. As you struggle to craft a budget solution, we urge you to reject any attempts to leverage fundamental policy protections. In every legislative session, business groups sponsor bills to take away the eight-hour day and weaken basic environmental standards. These bills do not make it through the Legislature because they are bad for workers and bad for California. But some are not satisfied by the results of the democratic process and seek to use the urgency of the budget process to leverage policy changes they cannot otherwise win. Rolling back the eight-hour day, taking away meal periods, scaling back environmental protections, or contracting out services without any standards do nothing to balance our budget. Instead, they cut worker pay, jeopardize health and safety, and cause irreparable harm to our communities. We cannot allow our core values as a state to be used as bargaining chips. Proposals to strip away basic labor and environmental standards hurt the very people who are already being harmed most by the budget. Working people and the poor face drastic cuts to healthcare and social services. These are the same workers who will see their wages cut from an overtime takeaway, will lose their lunch breaks in the face of employer coercion, and will see their neighborhoods polluted if environmental regulations are reversed. In the midst of record unemployment, reckless contracting out simply means more layoffs with less oversight for our tax dollars. These layoffs will hit low-wage workers the hardest and will exacerbate the problem by trapping more families in poverty. For these reasons, we urge you to reject policy rollbacks as part of any budget deal. Sincerely, Angie Wei Legislative Director, California Labor Federation Bill Magavern Director, Sierra Club California Warner Chabot CEO, California League of Conservation Voters Christine Spagnoli President, Consumer Attorneys of California