If 12 months ago you had told California legislators that by today they’d have a state budget passed and signed by the governor, it would have been deafening cheers and high fives all around.
After all, while the state Constitution calls for a balanced budget to be approved by the Legislature and sent to the governor by June 15, it hasn’t happened since 1986. Until this year.
But the celebrations are on hold as legislators and the governor wrangle over that 2009-10 budget in a financial fracas that threatens to be every bit as ugly as the battles that have filled Sacramento summers in years past.
For the tealeaf readers in the capital, the omens aren’t good for a quick solution to the $24.3 billion shortfall already forecast for the coming year.
Very little is going as advertised. For example:
1. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted the Legislature to have a package of measures passed and sent to his desk by today. Since neither the Assembly nor the state Senate has had vote number one on any part of a budget solution, that’s not going to happen.
2. Legislative leaders put together a joint conference committee to study the budget cuts Schwarzenegger proposed in his May budget revise (and in his revised May revise and in his revised, revised May revise and in his …) and fast track a plan both houses could vote on. But the committee still hasn’t finished its work and has punted some of the toughest calls, voting down cuts without suggesting alternatives to fill those gaps.
3. There also was the unspoken hope on both sides of the aisle that that maybe, just maybe, the doleful numbers in the governor’s slash-spending-to-the bone-and-beyond budget plan were based on a worst-case economic scenario that wouldn’t come to pass. Again, no such luck. Last week, state Controller John Chiang put out a May tax revenue figure that was $827 million worse than the estimates he made just 12 days earlier, the state still will be out of cash on July 29 and there are no indications things will be getting better anytime soon.
So you end up with solutions that range from really bad to just plain terrible. Democrats, Republicans and local governments don’t like the plan to “borrow” nearly $2 million for local government? Fine, Schwarzenegger said Friday in a speech in Escondido. We can replace that borrowing by taking $1 billion from health care for state employees and nearly the same amount from foster care programs. Your choice.
The nastiest battles this week are likely to all be on the Democratic side. While state senators are quietly suggesting that a budget plan, split between cuts and fiscal sleight-of-hand, could come by the end of the week, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and her caucus already are arguing that any budget agreement has to include boosts in things like the tobacco tax and the vehicle license fee, which is a guaranteed deal breaker for the governor and the Legislature’s Republicans.
Unions already are putting the pressure on the Democrats with a $1 million TV campaign calling for major tax increases and this morning will announce what they are billing as “an aggressive campaign to push legislators to halt deep cuts to schools, health care, home care and vital services that middle-class families rely on.’’
And while Republicans will be more than happy to hold the coats at that Democrats-only free-for-all, remember that if and when the majority party agrees on a budget, they still need some GOP votes to pass it. And after a February compromise that cost the Republican leaders their jobs, those votes will be even harder to find.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.