2. 职称英语
  3. When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the final cuts to an already pain-

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the final cuts to an already pain-

游客2023-12-02  18
问题     When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the final cuts to an already pain-peppered California budget in July, one of the most shocking indications of how dire things had become was the decision to close more than a third of the state’s parks. Fort Ross State Historic Park, 80 miles north of San Francisco, is among those that would have been closed. It was founded in 1812 as the
southernmost Russian settlement in North America. Demonstrators outside the State Capitol in Sacramento last summer hung photos to share memories of their park visits.
    On Friday, though, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s office said sufficient alternative savings had been found within the California Department of Parks and Recreation to avoid any closings at all, at least in this fiscal year. The savings, which the department had been unable to identify during months of budget wrangling, were suddenly realized with the help of Schwarzenegger administration finance experts looking over the shoulders of parks officials.
    In the two months since the July announcement, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s threat to close 100 parks had landed in a budget soft spot created by bipartisan outrage among lawmakers, their constituents and lobbyists, and by a growing sense in the administration that closing parks would do little to burnish the governor’s reputation as a public figure committed to the environment.
    Though few will rue the preservation of the park system, the 11th-inning save does underscore how even in the worst fiscal conditions, the threat of vast cuts is sometimes false, fueling skepticism among lawmakers and voters about ominous budget pronouncements and the ballot measures that often ensue to address them. "The budget process is so complicated and confusing to people to begin with, and there is so much distrust in government, that when people hear about changes in spending cuts, they are left questioning whether or not real revenues are really needed," said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group based in San Francisco.
    A plan to cut $175 million from a health insurance program was also recently reversed, but that program was spared by bipartisan legislation that replaced one tax for another and used federal stimulus money to fill the gaps. The parks department situation is different, because it is essentially a re-do. The department’s budget for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, was dealt a reduction of 10 percent, or $14.2 million. As a result, the state said in July, 100 of California’s 279 parks were to close at least temporarily unless donations or private partnerships materialized. But in the last week, amid a growing outcry and a leaked parks department memorandum suggesting that closing state parks could result in breach-of-contract lawsuits by the parks’ vendors, the administration began to back away. The backpedaling was apparently made complete with Friday’s announcement by the governor’s office, which said the savings would instead be realized with steps like cutting back on maintenance, delaying the purchase of equipment and reducing days of operation in some parks, hours of operation in others.
    The announcement described these savings as one-time, suggesting that the cost of running the parks would have to be addressed again in the budget for the next fiscal year. Roy Steams, a spokesman for the parks department, said the earlier budget negotiations, which lasted months, had perhaps not offered sufficient time to find the cuts that will now come to pass. Others attributed the impetus to political pressure from parks advocates and from lawmakers representing districts where businesses profit from the parks’ presence. Mindful that Friday’s rescue would nonetheless mean reduced hours for the parks, among other steps, Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, said: "They still have a $14.2 million budget cut. The governor found a clever way to find some political cover on this issue, but it’s not clear that the plan won’t actually leave Californians with just as limited an access to their state parks as if they were fully closed. "
    The foundation and other conservation groups hope to place a measure on the November 2010 ballot that would increase vehicle license fees by $15 a year to finance the parks, a move that would double their budget and free it from the state’s general fund. In exchange, California drivers would get free admission to all state parks. The governor rejected a similar measure proposed by lawmakers during the legislative session.  [br] We can learn from Paragraph Six and Paragraph Seven that________.
选项 A、keeping the parks open can benefit the economy better
B、drivers should bear the responsibility of helping the parks
C、the problem of the parks is far from being thoroughly solved
D、the governor is likely to accept the move this time
答案 C
解析 推断题。第六段最后引用加州公园基金会领导人的话，说明虽然公园没有关闭，但是缩短开放时间和开放天数也并不是最理想的状态，同时，第六段第一句说明，这个问题需要重新再议，由此可见，公园问题并没有得到彻底的解决，所以[C]为正确答案。虽然第六段第三句说公园开放的压力有一部分是来自地区代表，这样他们能从开放的公园中获得收益，但并不能说开放公园就一定对经济更有好处，因此排除[A]；第七段提到了向司机征收费用，但并不能说司机就应该对公园开放承担责任，故排除[B]；第七段最后一句说这个提议上一次已经被否决了，但并不能由此判断这次就很可能会通过，故排除[D]。
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