With the vacationing Legislature playing “drop it and run” with the new budget, that leaves Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as about the only politician left in Sacramento this week and he’s trying to make the most of it.
The governor warned that he is looking for cuts to make up for the $1.1 billion of revenue that disappeared when the Assembly refused to take transportation money from cities and counties and turned thumbs down on a plan to allow new drilling off the Santa Barbara coast.
The only question that will come up when, as expected, he signs the budget Tuesday is whether he’s going to play nice with the legislators and fiddle around the edges of the budget or take an ax to programs Democrats tried to save, such as welfare and health services. It depends on how interested Schwarzenegger is in picking a fight after the long and acrimonious budget battle.
Schwarzenegger already is rewriting the script of the budget dispute, making sure he comes out as the hero in the final reel.
Almost as soon as the Assembly approved the final budget bills Friday, the governor put out a budget fact sheet on his state web site entitled: “The Budget Solution: Solving the Entire Problem.”
“The governor stood firm,’’ the fact sheet/press release adds, “refusing to kick the can down the road.”
Fact check time. One of the ways the governor was “solving the entire problem” was by changing the numbers.
After weeks of saying the state faced a $26.3 billion dollar deficit, the governor and his finance crew changed their tune late in the day, arguing that because of unexpected savings and other budget magic, the actual deficit that needed to be solved was only $24.1 billion. That way the budget could be balanced without worrying about that pesky extra $2.2 billion.
As for “refusing to kick the can down the road,’’ that’s only true if you ignore the $2.2 billion in borrowing (i.e., money that has to be repaid “down the road”) or $1.7 billion in increased income tax withholding, which will disappear as soon as taxpayers file for their refunds. Not to mention the $1.4 billion the state “saves” by delaying next June’s payroll and health premium payments by one day, neatly punting that expense – and problem — into the next fiscal year.
Then there’s the governor’s list of reforms. While few people – most of them Democrats – will deny that the new changes in big dollar programs like welfare and in-home support services will end up saving California money, how much is little more than an educated – and in some cases, wishful – guess.
While rooting out fraud in IHSS may save the projected $221 million in general fund dollars in this year’s budget, no one really knows if that will happen. It’s the same with the $510 million expected from the CalWORKS welfare reforms. The estimates are a questionable target to base a budget on.
And when it comes to the corrections budget, it depends on a person’s definition of “reform.”
The governor says that about half the planned $1.2 billion in cuts will come from “parole and corrections custody reforms.’’
Ignoring the fact that next month’s legislative death match over the details of those prison cuts is going to be a battle that will sprawl across party lines, there are plenty of Republicans, who might not be willing to call early prison release of selected inmates and an end to direct supervision of some parolees “reforms.”
What’s funny about the growing public insistence that this budget agreement solves the state’s money problems without putting any burden on the future is that the governor’s aides freely admit that today’s solutions may cause problems tomorrow.
“Hey, this isn’t what the governor wanted, but it’s the best he could do,” they argue to reporters. “Yeah, we’ll have to find the money next year or farther down the road, but at least we have an agreement now that stops the bleeding.’’
That’s a perfectly logical argument that also fits the governor’s reputation as a pragmatist who can agree to accept half a loaf in a political struggle. He should be willing to trust that voters also can see it that way.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.