Author: John Wildermuth

As state mottos go, California’s "Eureka" just doesn’t cut
it anymore.

What about exchanging it for "We’ll see you in court"? Or
maybe "Of course I’m going to sue." Then there’s always Yogi Berra’s "It ain’t
over till it’s over."

Welcome to California, where nothing is final until the guys
in the black robes sing.

And considering the way the latest state budget guts court
funding, those concerts could be a long time coming.

Once upon a time, California was a place where the Legislature
and the governor could argue out the details of the state budget, with one side
giving a little here and the other side accepting some adjustments there until
everyone agreed on a spending plan that they might not love, but could at least
live with.

If you want some chuckles, watch the various pundits reel in
horror from the news that the state’s new citizens’ redistricting commission
won’t be releasing a second draft set of maps for California’s legislative and
congressional districts.

A group of black activists is calling
it an "egregious decision to perform their public charge without public
scrutiny."

The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters warns
darkly of the problem of expecting amateurs — i.e., real California voters
– to deal with something as complicated as redistricting and suggests the state
would be better off if the state Supreme Court picked up the pieces of the
commission’s likely failed effort.

And Tony Quinn, one of my cohorts on this blog, declared
Monday that "the Citizens Redistricting Commission has decided to exclude
citizens from the process."

It’s time to put Gavin Newsom out of his misery and
eliminate, once and for all, the lieutenant governor’s job.

Eliminate as in abolish, eradicate, dump, erase, wipe out,
vote away, strike from the Constitution. The voters don’t care about it, the
state doesn’t need it, and it’s nothing but a source of frustration to
ambitious politicians like Newsom, people who got into government with the idea
of doing something to make California a better place.

That’s not something anyone can do from the lieutenant
governor’s office.

Recent press releases from Newsom’s office have marked the
celebration of International Olympic Day at the state capitol, congratulated
Butte College on its "grid positive" energy status, thanked the New York state
Legislature for legalizing same-sex marriage and backed legal efforts to
restore same-sex marriage in California.

Gee, if Gov. Jerry Brown knew it was this simple, we could have had a budget last January.

Instead of months of boring meetings, angry phone calls and furious finger-pointing, he just could have announced during his budget statement that state revenues are going to increase by, oh, let’s say $20 billion over the next year, and that California’s financial problems are over. At least on paper.

Problem is, the state has to pay its bills not on paper but with the cash money that only exists in the real world, not the sort of blue sky guesstimates that are good enough to "balance" next year’s budget.

But what does that matter if the new agreement means legislators will start collecting their paychecks again?

Quick quiz: What two things does John Chiang have in common
with Alan Cranston, Houston Flournoy, Gray Davis and Steve Westly?

Well, like the others, he’s state controller and, as his
decision Tuesday to cut off pay to the Legislature showed, Chiang also doesn’t
plan to end his political career as California’s bookkeeper-in-chief.

Right or wrong – and you’ll find people on both sides –
Chiang’s decision to jump into the middle of the state’s annual budget brawl
was as much a political choice as an economic one.

You won’t hear that from Chiang, of course.

"My job is not to substitute my policy judgment for that of
the Legislature and the Governor, rather it is to be the honest broker of the
numbers," Chiang said
in announcing that the budget Gov. Brown vetoed last week wasn’t balanced, so
lawmakers won’t get paid.

For Jerry Brown, it’s time to put up or shut up.

As far back as last September, Brown promised voters that if he were elected, he’d put together a no-gimmicks, forward-looking spending plan, "an honest budget without the smoke and mirrors."

Well, sometime today the governor is expected to receive a budget with more smoke than a Texas barbecue and enough mirrors to fill a carnival funhouse.

And Brown will have to decide what to do with it.

You wouldn’t think it would be a hard choice. After all, in his remarks when he introduced his budget in January, Brown complained that "for 10 years this state has put together its budget with gimmicks and tricks and unrealistic expectations" and vowed it wasn’t going to happen again.

The meetings of the California Division of Occupational
Safety and Health usually aren’t one of the state’s hottest tickets, but boy,
was Tuesday an exception.

In one of those only in California events, Cal/OSHA
officials held a public
hearing to discuss requiring actors in porno films to use condoms.

Or, as the state bureaucrats would
have it, "each employer having any employees with occupational exposure as
defined by subsection (b) of this section shall establish, implement and
maintain an effective Exposure Control Plan which is designed to eliminate or
minimize employee exposure and which is also consistent with Section 3203."

Do you maybe think the voters have decided the Legislature
is more trouble than it’s worth?

I mean, if we’re talking savings, canning the 120 folks in
the Assembly and state Senate would save $11.4 million a year right away, and
that’s not even counting benefits and that tax-free $142 per diem.

It’s pretty clear voters aren’t convinced that the
legislators are earning their pay. A new poll by the
Public Policy Institute of California the other day found that only 17 percent
of the state’s likely voters approve of the job the Legislature’s doing,
compared to 72 percent who aren’t happy at all.

And as for trust, 18 percent of those likely voters think we
can trust the state government to do what’s right at least most of the time.
Which means, of course, that a solid majority is convinced California would be
better served if the Legislature was replaced by one guy flipping a coin. Way
cheaper, too.

California’s tax revenues are up, the unemployment rate is
inching down, business profits are improving and people are beginning to think
that just maybe the state has finally begun turning that financial corner.

Or, as Gov. Jerry Brown would say, "Damn."

Samuel Johnson once said, "The prospect of hanging
concentrates the mind," and there’s nothing like a good, strong whiff of fiscal
disaster to convince politicians and voters alike that Something Must Be Done.

But let those same folks get a hint that things might not be
as bad as they seemed, and all thoughts of tough choices and shared sacrifice
magically disappear. Call it the
No-One-Cares-About-The-Leaky-Roof-When-The-Sun-Is-Shining rule.