Author: John Wildermuth

The budget revision may be signed, but the fighting goes on.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may be anxious to talk about something – make that anything – else, but when he decided to whack another $489 million from a spending agreement that took two months of strife to complete, he guaranteed that it will again be all budget, all the time when the Legislature gets back from its summer recess next month.

Speaking at the budget signing Tuesday, the governor said he had no other choice if he wanted to have a none-too-generous $500 million reserve fund in the 2009-10 budget. But Schwarzenegger stuck his thumb in the eye of the Legislature’s Democrats when he blue-penciled millions from health and welfare programs they had fought desperately to save.

And since he already had proposed most of the cuts in his original May revise, Schwarzenegger in essence told the Democrats “Thanks for your efforts, but I’ll take it from here.’’

With the vacationing Legislature playing “drop it and run” with the new budget, that leaves Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as about the only politician left in Sacramento this week and he’s trying to make the most of it.

The governor warned that he is looking for cuts to make up for the $1.1 billion of revenue that disappeared when the Assembly refused to take transportation money from cities and counties and turned thumbs down on a plan to allow new drilling off the Santa Barbara coast.

The only question that will come up when, as expected, he signs the budget Tuesday is whether he’s going to play nice with the legislators and fiddle around the edges of the budget or take an ax to programs Democrats tried to save, such as welfare and health services. It depends on how interested Schwarzenegger is in picking a fight after the long and acrimonious budget battle.

Schwarzenegger already is rewriting the script of the budget dispute, making sure he comes out as the hero in the final reel.

California’s effort to close its $26.3 billion budget gap is stalled, at least temporarily, in the Assembly this morning as lawmakers haggle over school funding and borrowing from local cities and counties.

But even when the revisions pass — and almost all of them will — it’s not likely the budget will stay balanced for long. Even those legislators who helped put the agreement together sounded resigned Thursday to doing this all over again before the fiscal year ends next June 30.

“We’re likely to have to come back, probably in January, to deal with wherever the economy takes the budget,’’ Democrat Darrell Steinberg, the state Senate leader, told reporters.

His Republican colleague, Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth, sounded like a man with his fingers and toes crossed for luck when he spoke to the Senate before the budget vote.

Legislators’ phones will be ringing, jangling and buzzing in Sacramento the next couple of days as advocates for every group convinced it got the short end of the budget stick will be trying to make a last-minute deal.

Mayors and county supervisors will be screaming about losing billions in transportation and redevelopment money, environmentalists will be up in arms about new offshore drilling, state workers will be arguing about their furloughs and progressive Democrats will be upset about … well, just about every cut and revision in the adjusted budget.

Most of those complaints will get a sympathetic hearing – “I feel your pain” – and then a polite but unmistakable brush-off. After two months of watching California’s finances move onto life support, only a handful of legislators – that’s you Assemblyman Sandre Swanson – are likely to vote down what could be the only chance to staunch the bleeding.

Here’s a single question for anyone upset about the budget revise: What’s your alternative?

After more than two months of wrangling, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have signed off on a tentative deal that closes the state’s $26.3 billion budget deficit.

Now the real grumbling can begin.

Although details of the agreement, which was announced Monday evening, haven’t been released, enough broad outlines have leaked to show who won and who lost. The moaning will only get louder as the budget numbers solidify.

Actually, with the state’s current economic nosedive, there aren’t any real winners in the new deal, which revises a budget signed only months ago. Some groups, however, get hurt less than others.

Schools – and the education lobby – showed that they still pack plenty of political clout in Sacramento. Although there was no way they could avoid billions of dollars in cuts for next year, the final agreement ensures that they will be repaid at least $9.5 billion to make up for trims in recent years.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders were “unable to coordinate their schedules” for a meeting Sunday evening that could have ended the state’s budget crisis.

The possibility of a fix for a fiscal calamity that has chopped state services and left California paying its bills with IOUs may be important, but apparently not important enough to force some of the state’s leaders to deal with some inconvenience or even, God forbid, take an earlier plane flight to Sacramento.

The meeting was supposed to be the icing on the long-awaited cake, a chance for Republicans and Democrats to join the governor in finally signing off on a deal to close the state’s $26.3 billion budget gap.

Instead, on Sunday afternoon the governor abruptly postponed the slated “Big Five” session, with Schwarzenegger’s aides saying that Assembly Speaker Karen Bass was in her Southern California district and would not be able to return to Sacramento until at least 8 p.m.

“Until there’s a deal, there’s not a deal.”

      -Aaron McLear, spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

When McLear spoke those words to reporters Tuesday morning, he didn’t realize what a prophet he was.

Two days of untoward optimism fizzled Thursday as the governor admitted that the budget talks, while not broken, are “stalled.” Stalled as in it wasn’t even worth holding a Big Five meeting on Thursday. While it’s likely that everyone will get together today, the governor wasn’t making any promises.

As usual, the governor talked a good fight, promising yet again that a budget deal is just around the corner.

“There’s a will there, in this building, of both parties to get it done,’’ the governor said in a brief news conference Thursday.

State budget talks turned serious Tuesday as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders met late into the night in an effort to reach a final agreement on how to close the state’s $26.3 billion budget gap.

Karen Bass, who no one has ever accused of being Pollyanna when it comes to seeing the bright side of the long-running budget talks, startled reporters Tuesday afternoon by saying that an agreement finally was within sight.

“We think today’s the day,’’ she told reporters before stepping into the Big 5 meeting in the governor’s office. “We should finish this today; there’s no reason for it to go on any longer.’’

The fact that legislators are slated to begin their month-long summer recess on Friday also could be a factor in the long-awaited rush to agreement, but at this point, whatever works.

When Meg Whitman dropped her check for $15 million into her campaign for governor Monday, the former eBay CEO instantly raised the ante for the GOP governor’s primary.

Whitman, who’s in her first try for public office, said she was making the three-for-one match of the first $5 million in outside contributions she’s received to show her commitment to her run for governor.

But while there are plenty of candidates committed to their campaigns, not many have a spare $15 million or so lying around to put a price tag on that commitment.

That $15 million is on top of the $4 million she already has shoveled in to stoke the “Meg for Governor” campaign boiler. Last March, Whitman suggested to Fortune magazine that she could end up spending $50 million of her own money.