we bring in "today in the bay's" political analyst, larry gerston. let's talk about realignment.e haven't talked about this a lot. some of the others are over and over, broken record, but this is different. >> arnold schwarzenegger talked about blowing up the bocks. jerry brown is really trying to blow up the box in a way that's really very different. we have to get used to it. realinement is an attempt to match revenue sources with programs and services. that's about it. you have to realize where the money's coming with what you're doing with that money. now, before the days of proposition 13, local governments used property taxes for all kinds of things -- schools, right, police, fire, public hospitals, libraries. things like that. all kinds of traditional local services. guess what? after prop 13, all that money got sucked up or at least a lot. $550 billion, kris, went into the taxpayers' pockets and away from local government. $550 billion since 1978. okay. so instead, local governments have depended upon the state to make up that difference. okay. not so much of a problem be

larry gerston joins us this morning.morning. >> good morning. >> i talked with folks on either side of the issue in the bay area. i talked with a teach err member of a union and a city councilman whose city is asking if the workers can take a pay cut. let's hear what they had to say. >> okay. >> and we'll get to that -- >> we are deeply concerned because we don't view this as an attack on the union but as an attack on the middle class because the unions are made up of the middle class in this country. >> san jose is not madison. nobody here is talking about eliminating collective bargaining. we are talking about having a very difficult conversation around employee concessions, the kinds of concessions we need in order to balance our budget, in order to avoid the kind of severe layoffs that are going to result under the current structure. >> so what do you think? is it an attack on the middle class? and is it about more than just, you know, collective bargaining? >> it all depends how you look at this. in wisconsin, the u