The Assembly may have passed its own watered-down version of prison reform Monday, but it leaves the state way short of actually fixing any of the problems swirling around the system.
Nobody’s really saying that in public, of course. Darrell Steinberg, the Democratic leader in the state Senate, called it “a good first step,’’ although he made it clear that more has to be done. Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, seldom known for his tact, said through a spokesman that the Assembly bill “contains much-needed reforms.”
Inwardly, both Steinberg and the governor are likely seething.
Despite zero support from its GOP members and heavy lobbying from law enforcement, Senate Democrats came up with the votes to meet a promised $1.2 billion in prison budget cuts and trim some 27,000 inmates from the system.
The Assembly, on the other hand, folded like a cheap tent in the face of controversy. Their reform-lite version of the prison bill not only dumped plans for a commission to revise state rules on parole and sentencing, but also blew a $220 million hole in the state budget by refusing to make the needed cuts and only taking about 17,000 inmates from the state’s prisons.
That’s not likely to impress the panel of federal judges who have given the state until Sept. 18 to come up with a plan for removing some 43,000 inmates from the system to reduce overcrowding.
So now the governor has to find $220 million the cash-strapped state doesn’t have, while at the same time convincing the court that the state is really, truly working to make prison population cuts that the Legislature has no intention of approving.
Schwarzenegger tried to deal with one part of the problem Tuesday when he ordered the state to challenge the federal overcrowding order, arguing that the court action was inappropriate, erroneous and unnecessary.
If the three-judge panel that issued the ruling doesn’t grant a stay by Friday, the state plans to take the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state’s chances of convincing the panel to grant a stay are pretty slim. The ruling last month said that there was “overwhelming evidence” that overcrowding was the primary cause of the problems with health care and that the judges would “look with disfavor” on any attempt at delay.
And while no one can ever predict what the Supreme Court will do, the justices are likely to note that California has been under notice since 1995 that its health care system must be improved and has had a court-appointed receiver overseeing the system since 2006.
As for the money, Speaker Karen Bass insisted that the Assembly would find enough cuts to make up the difference “before the end of the legislative session.”
That’s pretty much the same nebulous time frame Steinberg is using for slating a conference committee effort to reconcile the two bills. That effort, he said, will occur “in the coming weeks.” Since the session ends on Sept. 11, there aren’t many “coming weeks” to work with, which is probably the point.
If there is a conference committee, the only reason a Republican will be invited is for politeness sake, since there wasn’t a GOP vote for the prison plan in either house.
Despite the looming court order on overcrowding, no way, no how was any Republican legislator going to suggest that any inmate see the light of day one second before his prison time was officially up. Giving well-behaved inmates six-weeks credit for staying out of trouble while in prison is rewarding someone for not breaking the rules, said Republican Assemblyman Martin Garrick, an apparent supporter of the stick and stick approach to discipline.
But the most boggling remark during Monday’s debate came from Republican Assemblyman Joel Anderson, who argued that training inmates to work as firefighters would just give them a way to escape from custody.
“I don’t want a state-sponsored jailbreak in my back yard and that’s what would happen.” he said.
California now has about 4,000 inmates trained as firefighters and prison crews have fought wildfires across the state for the past 60 years.
With fires raging out of control across the state, this is probably not a good time for Anderson to slam any firefighter, especially since residents of the many rural and mountainous parts of his San Diego district could find themselves very grateful to see those inmates on the fire line if a blaze breaks out.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.