State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, ended this year’s disappointing legislative session by channeling TV’s Maxwell Smart:
“Missed it by THIS much.”
That pretty much was Bass’ reaction when she said that the Assembly just ran out of time when it came to making deeper cuts in the state prison budget, despite her promise last month to come up with a bill that provided the $220 million missing from the Assembly’s “reform lite” version of the bill approved by the Senate.
Steinberg echoed that when he talked about why the Legislature couldn’t get a water deal done, even though Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, agriculture interests and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed that it was priority one this legislative year.
“Everyone agrees that we are close and that we have made a decade’s worth of progress in a few weeks,” Steinberg said in a statement Friday night, “but there is still more work to do,”
But these issues both had been hanging fire for months, with Friday’s end of the session always looming as the deadline. It’s not as though anyone in the Legislature can say this sneaked up on him.
The suggestion that all the problems would have been solved if only there was a little more time also turns a purposefully blind eye to the political facts of the debates/discussions/arguments.
On the prison bill, Republicans decided that if they closed their eyes, stuck their fingers in their ears and hummed really loud, the state’s need for $1.2 billion in budget cuts and a federal court’s demand for a reduction of more than 40,000 inmates from the overcrowded state prisons would magically disappear. And when a bunch of Democrats running for office next year decided that they didn’t want to do anything that would get them branded as “soft on crime,” no time extension was going to result in a tougher bill.
As for the water package, by the close of the session, everyone was still yelling at everyone else. Republicans claimed it kowtowed to “environmental extremists,” Delta politicians complained that they had too little say in the future of the estuary, Democrats worried that the proposed $11.8 billion in bonds would suck up funds that could be used for schools, parks and other programs and environmental groups couldn’t agree on whether the final compromise measure was a good thing or a bad thing.
Again, the arguments had gone on for months and continued through hours of closed door meetings Friday night, with little indication that a compromise everyone could agree to was anywhere in sight.
Steinberg and Bass have both asked the governor to call a special session on the water issue so they can take another crack at a solution. Schwarzenegger, who already plans special session on tax policy and education, reportedly is considering the request, but Matt David, his communications director, was quick to point out the bottom line of any renewed discussion on water.
In order to get the two-thirds vote needed to put a bond measure on the ballot, Democrats are going to need some GOP votes in the Legislature.
“It boils down to one thing,’’ David said, “and that’s Republicans and Democrats reaching a compromise.”
While a water agreement is important to California’s future, there is still time to work on it, even if the discussions are delayed until next year.
The prison bill, though, creates major problems right now.
Schwarzenegger backed the Senate bill, which cut $220 million more from the prison budget and moved 37,000 inmates out of the system over the next two years, compared to 16,000 in the bill that was finally passed. He has agreed to sign the bill, figuring that it’s at least something.
But that $220 million shortfall makes a huge difference in a state budget that’s currently held together with the fiscal equivalent of baling wire and chewing gum. And when you add that $220 million to the $237 million shortfall in August revenue state Controller John Chiang reported last week, that means that two months into the fiscal year, the state’s $500 million budget reserve has been almost eliminated.
To make things worse, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the state’s request to delay the federal court’s Friday deadline for providing a plan to relieve prison overcrowding.
A spokeswoman for the governor said that while the state is still looking at its options, “we will have something (for the court) by the 18th.”
“Something” is a pretty nebulous word for compliance with a deadly serious federal court order, especially when the state is going to have to explain how cutting 16,000 inmates is almost like cutting 40,000 and that all those legislators really didn’t mean it when they said they were no way, no how going to make any more reductions.
That’s not to say the Legislature didn’t deal with any of the top issues still hanging in the final days of the session. At 1 a.m. Saturday, they pushed across long-awaited bills to require California utilities to provide 33 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Schwarzenegger immediately promised to veto the bills, which he called poorly drafted, overly complex and “protectionist schemes that will kill the solar industry in California and drive prices up.” He said he would implement his own 33 percent mandate administratively.
Democrats, not surprisingly, don’t agree with the governor’s take on the renewable energy bills and Steinberg is bringing in environmentalists, consumer advocates and other backers of the bills for a Sacramento news conference this morning.
That’s not going to stop Schwarzenegger from vetoing the bills, of course, which means it’s back to the drawing board on that issue too.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.