Professor Feeney Comments on State Budget for Mercury News

Professor Floyd Feeney commented on the California state budgeting procedure for an article in the San Jose Mercury News examining the political wrangling surrounding Governor Jerry Brown's effort to extend temporary taxes despite a lack of support from Republican legislators. 

Professor Feeney explains that putting the extension before voters as a ballot measure would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, but "existing initiatives that are statutes, there's no question in my mind, can be amended by a majority vote," Feeney said, and since the taxes are on the books, an extension has a lower threshold than a new initiative.

Floyd Feeney is the Homer G. and Ann Berryhill Angelo Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law and the winner of the Law School's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1986 and 2008.  The author of seven books and numerous articles, Feeney has received awards from the National Institute of Justice and the California Probation, Parole, and Correctional Association, and is a nationally recognized scholar on election law.

San Jose Mercury News article