Susan Hackwood Executive Director

California is no stranger to budgetary quandaries, but the deficit hole to be filled this year - approximately $24 billion - exceeded anything this state, or indeed any other state government, has had to cope with. No one who follows the news will be unfamiliar with the mandated furloughs for state workers and for cuts to desperately needed programs across the board.

In a climate where everyone has something to lose, the value of communicating with one another and doing our best to both understand and respond intelligently to the fiscal crisis is central. California must be flexible in adapting to its current constraints, and so must we. The state has made significant strides in addressing issues of emissions control and environmental awareness; become a national leader in state-funded research and development - a new role for state governments; initiated broader efforts to develop widespread healthcare information technology networks; and begun to focus on better strategies for energy and water use.

Steps such as these have long-lasting implications for California and cannot be abandoned wholesale. If cuts must be made, they need to be done with as strategic an eye as possible, and the maximum possible effectiveness of state programs must be retained. "Smart governance in times of sharply diminished resources" was, in fact, the focus of CCST's May 2009 meeting, when instead of the usual single dinner speaker, CCST hosted a panel of experts with backgrounds in economics, public policy, and political science.

The news is not all grim. The federal stimulus package enacted earlier this year, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), has significant potential for California, with billions in funding projected to be available for education, infrastructure, energy, and public safety. In particular, several provisions of ARRA align well with recent California priorities, and follow the principles of the America COMPETES Act, a landmark federal bill from 2007 that was intended to provide a significant boost to education, science and technology spending.

It will be some time before the full impact of the stimulus package on California is apparent. However, early projections suggest that California could be receiving at least $400 million to support state energy programs (with California local governments receiving hundreds of millions more in block grants) and up to $8 billion for education, as well as support for healthcare. The funding will go a long way towards sustaining critical programs at a time when the state has little to give.

California remains a national S&T leader: first in national standards for greenhouse gas emission legislation, first in creating a state-funded research institution to pursue embryonic stem cell research when federal funding was not available and first in creating a state-level advisory organization such as CCST itself. We must all work together to ensure that, especially now, California benefits from a level of science and technology policy knowledge and wisdom suitable to maintain its status as America's leading science and technology state.