Today the Governor complemented our ability to work together on important legislation such as Race to the Top and water and appeared to indicate that he is ready to move beyond the terminator approach and actually work with the legislature. I hope his words will be turned into action. However, the devil may lie in the details. The budget will unveil whether this speech was sincere or just smoke and mirrors.

Moving beyond our ability to work together, the Governor highlighted two key issues important to California’s growth and economic recovery – jobs and education. Education can not afford anymore cuts. If we continue to cut education California will surely be on a race to the bottom. I agree that education can’t be cut any more and bringing jobs back to California must be a priority.   Last year we had to make a lot of difficult cuts to bridge the budget deficit. I know this year will be difficult as well as we look at a $19.9 billion deficit. I hope that we actually are able to work together this year and that his last State of the State was not just another action hero movie script.