Author: John Wildermuth

Another day, another lawsuit and another potential hole in California’s already leaky budget.

It’s looking ever less likely that the budget numbers will hold up until June 30, the end of the fiscal year. That means legislators are looking at a potential repeat of this year’s long and ugly budget revision battle, with even fewer choices available.

This time it’s the California Redevelopment Association that’s taking aim at the state’s spending plan. In a suit filed Tuesday in Sacramento Superior Court, the group is arguing that the state’s attempt to grab more than $2 billion from local redevelopment agencies to help balance California’s budget is unconstitutional.

If a judge agrees, the state is going to have to find $1.7 billion this year and another $350 million in 2010-11 to replace that redevelopment cash. And given California’s shrinking revenue numbers, that extra money isn’t likely to be there.

GOP gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner’s new plan to chop taxes, slash welfare and Medi-Cal spending and build up a $10 billion state budget reserve deserves cheers from voters across California, whether they’re Republicans, Democrats or independents.

Not over the details of the plan, necessarily, since there’s plenty for people to dislike in the economic blueprint the state insurance commissioner laid out Monday.

But every voter in the state should be thrilled whenever one of those-who-would-be-governor lays out a detailed plan, numbers and all, and says “Here’s what I’ll do if I’m elected.”

There’s not a politician or voter in California who can argue with a straight face that state government is running so well no changes are needed. OK, then, it’s up to the candidates for governor to get the debate started.

About that water vote this week …

Last Sunday, the governor and legislative leaders announced that amazing progress had been made on the water bill and suggested a magic agreement that would leave everyone happy was just days, or even hours, away.

Still, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted, the negotiators “still have a few remaining issues to work out.”

Remaining issues like, well, everything.

State Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, who had talked confidently of having both a bill and a vote by this week, decided Thursday to take a mulligan. Not only won’t there be a vote this week, he announced, but the state Senate – and the Assembly, for that matter – won’t even be in session. But next week everyone will be back in Sacramento for a vote on that pesky water bill. Maybe.

There’s a lot less than meets the eye in that UC study that found the furlough days ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger aren’t saving as much money as originally advertised.

The numbers may be right, although it’s likely to be a battle of dueling economists as the governor’s finance folks put on the green eyeshades and go over the numbers from the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

But even if the three-a-month furlough days from 193,000 state workers are only saving around half the anticipated $1.3 billion, as well as boosting California’s costs in future years, the governor is still a political winner.

Whatever the actual dollar figures are, $1.3 billion is the number that was used to balance the budget Schwarzenegger signed in July. And while there may be added costs or less savings in future years, hey, that’s the future.

“Vote for me, I’ve been on advisory boards,” doesn’t have the ring of a winning campaign slogan, but Republican Carly Fiorina is ready to use it.

Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, the lone official candidate for next June’s GOP Senate nomination, apparently annoyed Fiorina, an almost-but-not-quite-yet-official candidate, when he suggested to a San Diego Republican group Monday night that the former Hewlett-Packard CEO wasn’t ready for the political big time.

After beating up on Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for a bit, DeVore warned that the same people who supported the Hollywood superstar for governor are now saying “we should take a chance on another individual with no public policy experience.”

The charge had the Fiorina camp frothing.

Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger owes his job to paid signature gatherers, it’s no surprise that he vetoed a bill that would have made their lives a lot tougher – or at least more expensive.

That’s not the reason he gave, of course. A bill that would have banned the current pay-per-signature system was rejected because, according to the governor’s veto message, “prohibitions on per signature payments would make it more difficult for grassroots organizations to secure the necessary signatures and qualify measures for the ballot.”

Cue stirring music and video of California flag rippling over the Capitol.

Schwarzenegger’s veto of SB 34 by Democratic Sen. Ellen Corbett of San Leandro was serious stuff, however, since it blocked an attempt to make a major change in the way California deals with its ballot measures.

Well, the governor didn’t get the water deal he wanted – at least not yet – but he decided to declare victory anyway and sign the bills on his desk by the midnight deadline.

Some of them, anyway. Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally announced around 9:30 p.m. Sunday that he would “weigh all the bills on their merits,” plenty of them came up short on his scales. Of the 685 bills released by 3 a.m. this morning, the governor signed 456 and vetoed 229. That’s less than last year’s record rejection rate of 36 percent.

Although you’ll never hear it from Team Schwarzenegger, the threat to veto virtually every bill passed by the Legislature last month ultimately turned out to be little more than bluff and bluster. Or, to put it more delicately, a negotiating ploy. By the end of the evening, his loud demand for a complete, signed and sealed water deal had morphed into a vague statement that “we have made enough progress in our negotiations … while we still have a few remaining issues to work out.”

For San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the choice is now a simple one: either he does something to turn Democrats against Attorney General Jerry Brown or he loses next June’s primary for governor.

Whatever slim chance there was that the Democratic campaign for California’s top job wouldn’t turn into the usual mud bath likely vanished Thursday when a new Field Poll showed Newsom running 20 points behind Brown.

That’s double the 10-point lead Brown held last March. The new poll also showed the former governor smoking the three likely GOP challengers in head-to-head trial heats for the November 2010 election. Combine that with Brown’s nearly $6 million dollar lead in the money race and Newsom can see his chances of moving to Sacramento slipping rapidly away.

Since the new poll numbers make it even more unlikely that Brown is going to hit the campaign trail anytime soon, it’s up to Newsom to start making political life miserable for the attorney general.

Joel Fox, the honcho of this blog, had an interesting piece Wednesday about the prospect of dueling initiatives battling on the November 2010 ballot.

Ballot measures on the two-thirds budget vote rule, a split-roll property tax, a new paycheck protection assault on union dues, repeal of corporate tax incentives and other reform/revenge measures could bring out big money donors in campaigns that could change the political face of California, he warned.

Any of those measures could have a major impact on the state for years to come. But there’s an inside baseball feel to all of them, as if they’re issues that will stir up the party faithful and the groups directly affected, but won’t really interest the average California voter until a week before election day.