Author: John Wildermuth

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may finally have figured out how to unite California’s squabbling Democrats and Republicans: appoint Abel Maldonado as lieutenant governor.

When he announced Monday on the Jay Leno show that the state senator was his choice for California’s Number Two job, the governor may have convinced both sides to go to war against the Santa Maria legislator.

Republicans still haven’t forgiven Maldonado for his calculated decision last February to join Democrats as the deciding vote for a budget that hit Californians with billions in new taxes.

Democrats aren’t happy Schwarzenegger picked a Republican to replace uber-Democrat John Garamendi, who resigned as lieutenant governor earlier this month to take a seat in Congress.

California’s upcoming budget battle will be as much about politics as money and San Francisco’s property tax woes show why.

If San Francisco and other cities and counties are hurting worse than ever this year, they’re going to howl at any budget solutions that even hint at dumping more state obligations on local government. And when local mayors and supervisors speak, smart politicians in Sacramento – those who want to stay in Sacramento – typically listen.

Owners of some of San Francisco’s best-known properties are seeking huge cuts in their tax payments, according to a story in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. If the claims stand, the already cash-strapped city could lose more than $115 million in property taxes.

San Francisco isn’t alone. For the 2009-10 fiscal year, the state’s total assessed value dropped by $107 billion, or 2.4 percent. That’s the first decline since the state Board of Equalization began keeping record in 1933.

Don Perata apparently has decided that cancer research is sexier than the state budget when it comes to his election plans.

Perata, who wants to be Oakland’s next mayor, was at that city’s Children’s Hospital Monday, touting the launch of an initiative drive to boost the tobacco tax to raise money for cancer research.

Two days later, the Legislative Analyst’s Office put out a report showing that California is looking at a $20.7 billion budget hole next year and deficits bigger than that in each of the two years following.

Perata, a Democrat who was the state Senate leader until last year, knows exactly the type of devastating cuts that will be needed to close that budget gap and the type of damage those reductions will do to both the state and the people who depend on its services.

It’s discouraging to know that California is looking at a $20.7 billion budget deficit next year.

It’s disheartening to realize that the deficit numbers are expected to be even higher in the following two years.

But the hands-down most depressing, sinking-feeling-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach realization from the new budget report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office is that there is absolutely no chance this will end well.

Wednesday’s report suggests eliminating most state pay hikes until at least 2014-15. Think the Democrats, with their allies in the public employee unions, are going to agree to that?

What about the report’s suggestion that the Legislature end business-friendly tax credits and extend the vehicle license fee increase? Are there a lot of GOP votes for that?

Political campaigns don’t do nuance.

Take, for example, a story in the San Jose Mercury-News this weekend that questioned claims Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has been making at nearly every stop during his run for governor.

The story noted that nearly half the $1.81 billion in insurance rate cuts Poizner touts on the campaign trail resulted from regulations written by his predecessor, Democrat John Garamendi. It also reported that a third of the budget cuts he talks about were imposed by the governor and the Legislature because of the state’s budget woes.

Newspapers being newspapers, with all that old-school MSM commitment to fairness, balance and the like, the story also reported that Poizner actually had to approve Garamendi’s regulations before they took effect and repeated the commissioner’s argument that cuts are cuts, regardless of how they come about.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said recently that she won’t decide whether to run for governor until she sees what the current candidates plan to do with the state budget.

Fine. Budget plans are important. She should start with hers.

When asked recently by an Associated Press reporter whether she was thinking about big-footing her way into next year’s governor’s race, California’s senior senator said, in effect, “Maybe.”

First, though, she wants to see what plans the existing pack of candidates have to deal with the state’s ongoing budget woes and determine how committed they are to making the changes that are needed.

“California is in considerable distress and there have to be reforms,’’ she said.

Legislators are generally convinced that if people only paid more attention to the work elected officials do in Sacramento, there would be a lot more sympathy for the plight of the poor politician.

But a poll released Thursday by the Public Policy Institute of California seems to show that the more involved people are in government, the less they like the people making the laws.

Take, for example, the job approval ratings for the state Legislature. When the poll asked a sample of all California adults how the Assembly and state Senate were doing, 18 percent thought they were doing a good job.

Limit that sample to people registered to vote in the state and the approval rate slips to 15 percent. But when only those people who are registered and likely to vote are surveyed, the Legislature’s approval skids to a rock-bottom figure of 10 percent. That’s a record, by the way, but don’t expect to see any celebrations in the Capitol.

If you like good news, it doesn’t look like California is going to have to call a special session on the budget before Jan. 10.

Come Jan. 11, though …

While the state’s current budget was balanced earlier this year with little more than boundless optimism and finger-crossed dreams of a better financial future, fiscal reality is about to strike, big time.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his money team have been putting out the word that this year’s budget already looks to be $5 billion to $7 billion short of estimates. And that doesn’t include the $7.4 billion shortfall already predicted for the 2010-11 budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

And how accurate are these new estimates?

A veteran Democratic consultant was talking about next year’s Senate race recently and suggested that Carly Fiorina could be the toughest opponent Sen. Barbara Boxer has ever faced.

“That is, of course, if she wins the primary,” he added.

If you listen to the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, that June GOP primary is just a barely noticeable dip on her road to a fall face-off with Boxer, the Bay Area Democrat who’s held the seat since 1992. Since Fiorina finally admitted last week that well, yes, she really is running for Senate, she’s been on a none-stop attack against Boxer, who she described as “the opponent” at one campaign stop.

But some recent statewide polls, not to mention Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, suggest that Fiorina might want to delay putting down a deposit on an election night headquarters for November.