While the devil is always in the details, usually it’s a pretty good idea to at least provide those details.
That’s not always the way the state Legislature works, however.
Darrell Steinberg, Democratic leader of the state Senate, said Monday that this week’s conference committee report on a package of bills designed to preserve the Delta, provide water to all of California and end decades of fighting over how to deal with the state’s single most important resource won’t include a plan to pay for any of that.
That’s right, after months of often heated talks and three weeks of long hearings and closed-door meetings by the bipartisan, 14-member committee, the Legislature still can’t agree on a price tag for the huge water package.
While Republicans on the conference committee moaned Monday that their “common-sense proposals … have been summarily dismissed,’’ Steinberg told them not to worry, the situation is well in hand.
“The policy pieces will not be debated on our floors until they are joined by a comprehensive finance proposal,’’ Steinberg said in a statement Monday night. “I urge my Republican colleagues to hold their judgment until that work is completed, which will be no later than Friday.”
Well, yeah, since Friday is the final day of this year’s legislative session. But the decision by Steinberg – and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who joined the Senate leader on the conference committee – to delay the unveiling of a finance plan virtually guarantees a week of “Let’s Make a Deal” negotiating, followed by an attempt to force a Friday vote on complicated compromise measures that most members will barely have a chance to see, much less read.
It’s not as though the water fight is all the Legislature has to deal with, either. With only four days to go before the session is gaveled closed, there’s the usual flood of end-of-the-session bills to be voted on, including some that won’t go quietly.
There’s still a wide gulf between the Senate’s version of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s prison reform package and the “reform lite” version passed by the Assembly.
Although the Assembly bill torpedoed the Senate’s call for a commission to review California’s sentencing laws and alternative custody proposals to cut overcrowding in the prison system, Bass promised to debate both issues in separate bills.
Don’t bet on it. In recent days, Bass has been talking instead about trying to get to those new prison bills and making the best possible effort to deal with the issues. In Legis-speak, that generally means that while a bill may get written, it will be on the fast track to the side track.
That’s going to leave it up to Steinberg and his Democratic colleagues in the Senate to decide whether they want to push for a tougher bill than the Assembly was willing to stomach or just duck the fight and go with the weaker package.
If they do, it will be up to Schwarzenegger to decide whether the Assembly bill is good enough for him to sign, especially since as it’s now written, it’s $220 million short of the savings needed to keep the state’s threadbare budget in balance.
But the water package will be this week’s main event, not only because of its importance to the state, but also because both Schwarzenegger and the Democrats are desperate to end the year with something, anything, resembling a big-time victory.
Republicans are calling for a $12 billion bond measure that includes $4 billion for dams and other storage facilities, while Democrats generally hate the idea of dams, prefer a much smaller bond and want to hit Delta water users with fees that will be used for environmental purposes, a likely non-starter with Republicans.
Although everyone agrees the state’s water system is broken and must be fixed, where you stand generally depends on where you live.
Central Valley legislators want water for agriculture, Southern California legislators need drinking water for their cities, Delta-area interests want their region protected. Add to that the various environmental concerns, the state’s grim financial picture and the long-running suspicion Northern Californians have about any plan that moves “their” water south (See Peripheral Canal, 1982 ballot measure) and you have a dispute that’s going to be mighty tough to resolve in four days.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.