Jerry’s Snappy Comeback Line to His Critics: "A million new jobs since 2010, a budgetary surplus in the billions, and a minimum wage rising to $10!"
What He Blamed Budget Instability on: National recessions, improvident tax cuts, and too much spending.
What Pleased the Tech Crowd: Mentions of biotech, precision medicine, and the new tax credit to help innovators.
Speaking of Dreams, Here’s His: High Speed Rail and a Million Electric Vehicles.
Who He Thanked: The Legislators, members of his Administration, and the voters for passing Prop. 25 in 2010 and Prop. 30 in 2012, but not the Academy.
Why We Aren’t Out of the Woods: The uncertainty of life, climate change, and the historical volatility of the stock market and the business cycle.
Things that Make Him Worried: $100 billion for pensions owed to state workers, teacher and judges; tens of billions needed to cover retiree health care; $65 billion needed for roads and other infrastructure; and the uncertain costs of the Affordable Care Act, unforeseen federal mandate$, and unexpected natural disasters.
Who He Quoted: the Book of Genesis, American philosopher George Santayana, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the UN Panel on Climate Change.
Brown’s Word of the Day: "Subsidiarity" (defined as the idea that a "central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level)
What He Applied that Clunky Word To: Education’s new Local Control Funding Formula.
What He Thinks Is on the Right Track: The new public safety partnership between local authorities and the State as to tens of thousands of lower level offenders who were transferred from state prisons to county jails (he asked Legislators for funding for new state and country jails and finding better medical treatments for the mentally ill and drug addicts).
What He Wants You (an Average Joe) To Do: Conserve water, and use less gasoline.
What He Wants Regulators to Do: Rebalance water rules; enable voluntary transfers of water; expand water storage; undertake groundwater management; and prepare for forest fires.
What He is Proud of on Climate Change: AB32, building and appliance Energy Efficiency standards, development of the Renewable Energy Standard, national leadership on electric vehicles.
What He Said on Immigration: "Immigrants [in California] can not only dream — but drive."
What’s on the Back of His Playing Cards: a chart of California’s budget for 15 years which says "Huge deficits follow balanced budgets."
What Keeps His Spirits Up: A photo of First Dog Sutter Brown as the Joker saying "Bark if you hate deficits" on the same set of playing cards.
