Facing a 12.4 percent unemployment rate and a budget deficit of $19.1 billion, California’s next governor will have to make important decisions from day one. After examining both candidates’ plans for dealing with the budget, the environment and the economy, the editorial board recommends that voters choose Democratic nominee Jerry Brown for governor of California.

Though less than comprehensive, Brown’s budget plan offers pragmatic ideas for addressing the Golden State’s fiscal woes. He promises to adopt a “pay-as-you-go” funding approach, vetoing any new spending bills that are not financed by additional revenues, and proposing a constitutional amendment to write the policy into law. He has championed a “rainy day fund,” which would collect money during times of budget surplus to soften the blow of economic downturns. He has also published specific plans to reduce the structural costs of the state prison system and Medi-Cal. Brown’s proposals will not close the deficit any time soon, but they do offer a long-term solution to a long-term problem. Any who doubt Brown’s commitment to fiscal responsibility need only to look at his record as governor during the 1970s, when he oversaw the largest budget surplus in state history.

Meg Whitman, the Republican nominee, plans to cut $15 billion from the California budget by firing 40,000 public employees and cutting social programs<\p>–<\p>all while eliminating the capital gains tax to line the pockets of wealthy investors. The loss of so many jobs in such a dismal economy would be a dangerous experiment in how to exacerbate a recession. Furthermore, $9 billion of the $15 billion Whitman has pledged to cut has yet to be identified, meaning that thousands more public employees would have to be fired under Whitman’s plan.

Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize winner and Stanford professor of economics, joined an impressive list of California scholars in signing a letter concluding that Whitman’s budget and economy proposal, “Meg 2010,” “is based on faulty economic theories and on studies that are fundamentally unsound.” Fortunately, the state legislature would never accede to Whitman’s draconian policies. Whitman would have to devise a new budget plan upon taking office.

We are pleased that both Brown and Whitman support significant investment in renewable energy and have come out in favor of AB 32, California’s emissions-pricing scheme. Whitman deserves credit for standing behind California’s 33 percent renewable energy standard, but Brown has made the same commitment and offered a much more detailed and extensive plan for bringing renewable energy and jobs to California. Under Brown’s plan, California would see an additional 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2020, including solar panels on commercial buildings and along highways. Financing would be provided for efficiency upgrades to buildings, which consume approximately 40 percent of energy used in the U.S.

Voters this year have an important choice at the ballot box. Meg Whitman offers radical spending cuts that would be ill advised in normal times and catastrophic for a languid economy like California’s. Jerry Brown offers a long-term commitment to fiscal health that does not sacrifice the economy and detailed plans to build California’s clean energy future.