Although 45 states face budget shortfalls for the coming fiscal year, the State of California is faced with a deficit in the ballpark of $30 billion — by far the nation’s largest. Working with Reason Foundation, The Performance Institute applied the methodologies and strategies it routinely uses with federal agencies and programs to the State of California’s proposed FY04 budget. What we found was that governments facing budget deficits have more than two choices — It is no longer merely an issue of raising taxes or slashing budgets across the board. Our research yielded the Citizens’ Budget — a non-partisan, 150-page plan that details a set of 10 reforms that, if implemented, would close California’s $30 billion gap and actually produce a $6.5 billion surplus. The reforms recommended within the Citizens’ Budget can be applied to state and local budgets nationwide.

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