California's approval of record levels of debt last year was just the start of many more billions of dollars of borrowing needed for the country's most populous state, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Thursday.
"I was at a meeting this morning where someone said, 'Look, we need $150 billion just for infrastructure and transportation.' It's true," Schwarzenegger told Reuters in an interview in a state office in San Francisco.
"We need $500 billion to rebuild California the way it ought to be," he added. "But this is of course too big for people to digest, so you don't talk about that."
Speaking about the total of $42.7 billion in general obligation bonds authorised by voters last year for public works spending, Schwarzenegger said: "This was only the foot in the door, to whet the appetite." "Now we are going to go and say this is a good down payment, now let's go all out and let's rebuild."
An aide later stressed that the governor supported public-private partnerships that would share some of the cost of infrastructure spending. In the short term, Schwarzenegger acknowledged California could face lower tax revenues than projected in his January budget plan, but said he opposed new taxes.
"If we are short of projections, then we have to deal with that - sit down with the Democrats and Republicans at that point and talk about it, where should we make cuts and how should we make the adjustments there so that we can bring our structural deficit down this year," he said. "We have done tremendously with the revenue increases, but we do not want to do a tax increase."
In recent weeks, California's finance department, the state controller and the state's budget analyst have each issued estimates that show California's tax collections are running about $1 billion below the level forecast by the administration.