I am thoroughly disgusted with the California Legislature. I believe the public should and does have the right to be irate about this situation of passing a budget on time. I am 69 years old and I cannot remember the last time a budget was passed on time.

Just a few years ago, we had a surplus of money for the state. What happened to it? I will tell you what happened to it; bad judgment by past governors and their administrations and legislators’ wasteful government spending on programs not needed.

The current governor has at least kept his word to the people of California and has not accepted a penny of salary for his job and has said he will not until the State of California is out of the red and back into the black. That’s more than the Legislature has said or done.

Did you know that the Legislature is the highest paid elected officials in the State of California? Have they sacrificed any of their salaries? No! Not one cent and besides they get all those perks like a gas allowance, credit cards, cars or limos, lunch and dinner expenses, etc… That’s where some of your money has gone, on our government legislators’ perks.

I am retired and disabled and I have had my SSI income cut twice, and I am now looking at possibly a third time. Our incomes have never been brought up to the current standard of living. We are well below poverty level incomes. Why take from those that have little income to start with? When we received the SSI raise this year it was for one month only before the Legislature decided to take it away. Why did they ever give us raise? It’s poor planning by the State of California, I believe. Doesn’t the Legislature believe they should make a sacrifice themselves for the betterment of the economy? They could give up a credit card or a limo. I repeat, they haven’t put one penny out of their own pockets to help the situation.

Remember, the legislators are robbing you the public! Remember, the highest paid state employees are the ones the public votes into office.

Please remember this election time and let’s clean house and vote all of them out of office. We need to make a change in California government. It’s a start.

— Mel Powell