As California seeks ventilators, coronavirus reveals hazards of Jerry Brown’s austerity

“What’s out there is darkness, uncertainty, decline and recession,” said Gov. Jerry Brown after unveiling his final state budget in 2018. “So good luck, baby.”

Brown grew fond of such pessimistic utterances during his final years in office. He spoke often of economic headwinds, climate change and nuclear war. He issued repeated warnings on many scary topics, but he missed a big one. Pandemics like the coronavirus didn’t rank highly in his hierarchy of dooms.

Brown’s obliviousness to pandemic threats is evidenced by his 2011 decision to scrap state-owned resources Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had established for a situation like the one facing us today.

“In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics,” according to a story by Reveal, a project by the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Schwarzenegger bought the equipment while state coffers were flush. Then along came the Great Recession. In 2010, California voters tasked Brown with fixing the budget deficit Arnold left behind. Among the things he cut: Schwarzenegger’s pandemic stockpile.

“In 2011, the administration of a fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who came into office facing a $26-billion deficit,” wrote Reveal’s reporters. “And so, that year, the state cut off the money to store and maintain the stockpile of supplies and the mobile hospitals. The hospitals were defunded before they’d ever been used.”

“It’s the nearsightedness of political decision-making,” said Dr. Howard Backer, former head of California’s Emergency Medical Services Authority. “If you talked to the experts, we knew that pandemics were going to come around.”

The medical stockpile included 2,400 ventilators, 50 million N95 masks and scores of mobile hospital beds. All would be extremely useful now. How much did skinflint Brown save by cutting them? A mere $5.8 million a year.

The decision, little-noticed at the time, has earned Brown some criticism. Richard Eskow, a former Bernie Sanders advisor, attributes Brown’s regrettable cuts to the former Jesuit’s embrace of asceticism. “‘Small is beautiful’ can become ‘small is deadly,’ in a heartbeat,” wrote Eskow, knocking Brown’s admiration for 1970s minimalist E.F. Schumacher.

Fair enough. But such criticisms don’t take into account the situation Brown faced as he governed through an unprecedented budget crisis. Yes, he slashed California’s pandemic stockpile. Then again, what didn’t he slash?

Between 2011 and 2013, Brown eliminated redevelopment agencies, cut thousands of state jobs and ended state funding for libraries. He also forced painful spending reductions to higher education and programs for California’s most vulnerable citizens — the poor, the elderly and the disabled.

No cut was too big, or too small. Some were awful but others were overdue. For example, Brown discarded plans to spend $356 million on a new death row at San Quentin and reduced the prison population by 30,000. He confiscated 48,000 taxpayer-funded cell phones, saving $20 million a year. He banned state agencies from producing promotional trinkets like keychains, pens and squeeze balls — also known as “swag” — to save a few million more.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, cutting became a core function of government. Few cuts took place without someone crying foul. Even the swag manufacturers decried the cuts, arguing that DMV-branded coffee mugs created jobs.

They were easy to ignore. It was harder to look past the parade of suffering and impoverished people who marched on the State Capitol demanding basic assistance. Still, Brown butchered health and human services spending to balance the budget and restore California’s fiscal health.

“A third way is not given,” he declared, in Latin.

By cutting billions from the budget, Brown helped convince voters to raise taxes. Afterward, his popularity soared.

In retrospect, Brown erred by scrapping the pandemic stockpile. But who budgets for future emergencies while eliminating money for the current ones? I don’t recall any debate about it, though some — like state Sen. Richard Pan, then Sacramento’s assemblyman — apparently fought to preserve it.

“When you’re stretched, prevention and readiness, future needs — unfortunately, that’s what gets cut,” Pan, a doctor, told Reveal’s reporters.

Brown’s severe cuts matched California’s appetite for fiscal discipline. Even after the state recovered, polls showed that voters preferred paying down debts over restoring deep cuts to social services. At the time, the idea of spending millions to hoard equipment for future pandemics would have seemed Moonbeamish.

Not anymore. Today, Brown’s abundance of budget caution has translated into a lack of disaster preparedness. It’s fair to criticize his lack of foresight on COVID-19, but there’s a broader lesson here.

Californians live with the constant threat of disasters — earthquakes, fires, floods or climate change. But the looming recession may produce another grim season of fiscal austerity. In our zeal to balance budgets and impress credit rating agencies, we must remember that protecting people from disaster is an essential government function.

Brown’s failure to maintain the ventilator stockpile provides a cautionary tale. State leaders must plan for the worst, and this sometimes requires investments like Schwarzenegger’s. California must solve its most pressing challenges, but without leaving itself vulnerable to seemingly less-urgent — yet deadly — future threats.

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "As California seeks ventilators, coronavirus reveals hazards of Jerry Brown’s austerity."