Abel Maldonado and his toady Brandon Gesicki have been all over the news pushing the frame that Controller John Chiang is wasting a million dollars on office furniture:

The same day the governor vetoed the Democrats’ budget proposal, the Controller’s office requested $924,500,000 worth of new office furniture from this fiscal year! How is that acceptable? Here is an elected official who is in the press every day talking about cutting services, stopping checks to welfare recipients and issuing IOUs to hardworking Californians. But at the exact same time, he is requesting new office furniture. This disgusting and disingenuous behavior has to end.

This is, quite frankly, bullshit. The money was approved by then-Controller Steve Westly, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the State Legislature in December 2006 not for “furniture” but to bring the C Street office complex up to code. From a presentation the Controller’s office sent out today:

• The current workstations were out of compliance with ADA, OSHA and SAM requirements.

• Current stations were 10-20 years old (80% were 20+ years old and replacement parts are no longer

manufactured).

• DGS confirms that there was not (and is not) enough used modular furniture available.

•In 2005, wires melted and smoked in one bank of cubicles, causing evacuation of the building, raising health and safety concerns.

So the office remodel isn’t being done for vanity, but to reduce a hazard AND the risk that the state of California will face lawsuits that will rack up legal bills. And the whole plan actually saves Californians money:

Bottom Line: $3,982,000 savings from purchasing efficiencies

$1,500,000 savings from less expensive rent, in future years

How did Maldonado vote when this funding came up in summer 2007?

August 21, 2007, Senate approves C Street BCP contained in SB 77 (Budget Act for FY 07/08) [vote was] 27-12, Maldonado votes “aye”

Abel Maldonado is a dishonest and self-interested politician who only wants to cut budget deals that advance his career – even when they cost the state $5.5 million.

Done for the Facebook reference: I may not get to 25.

1. One bit of schadenfreude in this is that Doug McIntyre of KABC and the comment section of the OC Register are flipping out over the heretics who broke with dogma and voted for tax increases.  McIntyre was particularly incensed about a Sacramento Bee editorial lauding Dave Cogdill as a “hero.”  He’s not a hero, he’s an extortionist, but McIntyre was calling him a guy who “took money out of your pocket to give to someone else.”  Typical Yacht Party jihadism.

2. It’s very clear to me that this got wrapped up today before the Yacht Party’s meeting in Sacramento, just blocks from the Capitol, so the spectacle of the crazies on the lawn demanding that old people eat cat food and public schools use the weeds out back for lunches be averted.

3. Joan Buchanan voted for the budget and then voluntarily cut her pay 10% in the name of shared sacrifice.  It’s a stunt, but it will probably go down well back home.

4. One loser in all of this is Zed Hollingsworth.  He got nothing in this budget for his newly-minted Minority Leadership, including no re-negotiation, and the next major talks may not be until summer 2010, at which point a repeal of 2/3 may be a fait accompli.  Meanwhile he’s already embarrassed himself by scheduling a $1,000-a-person fundraiser with fat cat lobbyists just HOURS after being made leader, one that generated such bad press he had to cancel it.

5. The big winner in all of this, perhaps the only one?  Twitter.  In a cavernous Capitol with a dearth of political reporting, the microblogging site was practically the only way to get quality information in real time.  It cannot replace in-depth analysis for a mass audience, but it was great for opinion leaders.

6. Though I’ve knocked him in the past, kudos to John Burton for recognizing the real problem and seeking to boldly fix it.  From an e-mail:

If the last 48 hours has proven nothing else, we can no longer allow Republicans to hold the people of California hostage and therefore dictate to the Democratic majority the terms under which the budget is passed.

California should join the 47 other states who don’t require a supermajority to pass the budget.

If I am elected as the next Chair of the California Democratic Party, I will make majority vote budget a top priority.

7. The federal stimulus is really helping out to reduce the pain in this budget.  It does appear that as much as $10 billion dollars will flow to California in this fiscal year, which would “trigger” some jiggering to the cuts (which would be reduced by $950 million) and the tax hikes (reduced by $1.8 billion).  It’s an open question whether or not all of them can be spent right away because of the cash crunch, but we’ll have to see how the markets react.

8. This is a baseline overview of the deal.  The cuts are going to be really, really bad: 10% across the board for education, huge cuts for public transit operations, health care, etc.  The new revenues basically fill in the loss of revenue from massive unemployment.  Essentially, this is the same level of spending as a decade ago, adjusted for inflation and COLA, despite greater need and higher population.  Not pretty.

9. Capitol Weekly reports that the cuts could hit Republican-leaning areas harder:

But data from the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) suggests that cuts under the budget plan approved Thursda morning could likely hit many Republican areas hardest-while the tax burden is already falling more heavily on Democratic leaning counties.

According to the data distributed by Assembly Budget Committee chairwoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, the majority of the counties using the most in state services are generally represented by Republicans. When this data on 2007-2008 state spending is compared to registration data from the Secretary of State’s office, it shows that seven out of the top 10 counties receiving state expenditures, measured per capita, have Republican registration majorities. Of the top 10 counties that contributed the most per capita tax dollars in 2006, eight have Democratic registration majorities.

“I hate to put this in partisan terms, but it’s the wealthier counties who are paying that are represented by Democrats,” Evans said. “Everybody needs to take a step back and look at what the data actually says.”

Food for thought.

10. Wrapping the week up into a nice little bow, on the day the deal was secured, they found Lance Armstrong’s bike.

11. There’s a big TV/film production credit in here.  While as a member of the industry I’m mindful of runaway production, I reject the “race to the bottom” that constant credits to get crews to shoot in California presume.  It’s corporate welfare, essentially.

12. The “single sales factor apportionment,” which is the massive business tax cut, doesn’t kick in until FY2011, predictably and conveniently after Gov. Schwarzenegger is out of office and it will be someone else’s problem to make up the revenue!  It’s almost like somebody planned it that way!

13. Of the items on the May ballot, only privatizing the lottery would really kill this whole thing and send everybody back to the bargaining table.  That would be $5 billion in lost projected revenue for this fiscal year.  But it’s a NET LOSS OVER TIME, which is what makes the provision so completely absurd.  Also, I’m not convinced anyone wants to buy our lottery, as revenue has shriveled in the past year.

14. Arnold still has $600 million in line-item vetoes to make to bring this into balance.  Hands up if you think they will impact the poor, the elderly, the blind, and others with almost no voice in Sacramento!

15. Karen Bass is vowing “additional Legislative actions before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.”  So get ready for more fun!

There is no 16-25.

(remember, 2:00! – promoted by David Dayen)

We haven’t done one of our famous Calitics Radio shows for a while, but we figured today would be a good day for it, because, you know, nothing’s happened for a while.

Dave and I will be joined by two of the top budget tweeters around, Scott Lay of the Community College League and Anthony Wright of Health Access.  

You can catch the show right here, find it at iTunes or check the flip.

This is my first diary on Calitics, so please bear with me.  The legislature has now passed a budget deal.  This is a bad, bad, horrible, awful deal.  I will not discuss that deal further, as it prompts me to use language not suitable for mixed company. What it does tell me, and should tell anyone with a pulse, a brain, and a conscience, is that the two-thirds rule is a license to commit extortion.  Enough’s enough!

We must now move to next steps.  These are my ideas, but alternative suggestions are welcomed.  We should agree on our plan as a progressive community, and move forward.  We should all remember that “the perfect is the enemy of the good” and keep focused on the main prize — upholding progressive values.

My five point plan, coming up.

1.  Symbolic but necessary:  a resolution castigating Perata for blocking efforts to remove Denham and Maldonado last year.  Unilateral surrender is never an option.

2.  Defeating the open primary proposal in 2010.  Even if the plan itself is good on the merits (a debatable issue), we cannot give in to blackmail.

3.  Qualifying and passing a majority-rule initiative for June 2010.  Whether it’s a clean 50%+1, the August 1 proposal, Bass’ proposal, 55%, or some other option at this point is irrelevant.  We have to move the ball forward on this issue.

4.  Demand, I repeat DEMAND, that the party chair and the legislative leadership contest every single seat to the utmost.  Unilateral surrender is never an option.

5.  Start working now to elect a Democratic governor and more Democrats in both houses of the legislature.  We need to capture 2/3 in case the majority rule initiative fails.

Let’s go!

Well, the deal is done, Abel (and Arnold) gets his open primary measure. But, honestly, it’s hard to remember a speech so rife with hypocrisy as Maldo’s final speech on the floor this morning, even from a body that is itself riddled with hypocrisy. Some thoughts and a recap of the speech over the flip.

He begins with some material ripped off from the Democrats.  He talks about how children need this budget, how the college students need this budget, yada yada.  All good points, but where was he for the last few weeks?

He moves on to rage against the Republicans, saying that “never thought I would have to defend the people of California from my party, which refuses to see the truth and would rather see the state crumble than address the reality of a fiscal crisis.” Or something like that. Maldo proceeds to gets misty over a picture of Gov. Reagan and thinks of the good ol’ days.

Does he think that we haven’t noticed his votes over the last few weeks? Does he think the open primary will really help the children? Or was it the $1 million he took from the Controller’s office for furniture that really saved the kiddos?  Won’t he think of the children?

He dreams of a “Chamber of Pragmatists” in the Senate. Yeah, maybe we can have 40 little Abels running around the Senate.  Except that Abel acknowledges that there will be dire “political consequences” for his vote:  

This might be the end for me. But this vote ensures that it is not the end for the State of California.

What a joke.  If Maldonado gets recalled, his actions of the last few days will ensure that few actually lift a finger to save him. Maybe Don Perata will go knock on doors for him, in between conversations with his attorneys, I mean.

Even if this open primary measure passes, it won’t go into effect until the 2014 statewide races. If Senator Maldonado really thought that the open primary would help him win any future race, well he is sorely mistaken.  Will he be able to pull himself into a “top two”? Perhaps, but even that seems doubtful.  This is a man that used the state’s crisis to try to grab whatever he could get. A man that knew what was right for the state, but held out for some cheap political points.

Certainly it took a fair amount of courage to vote for this budget, and I grant him that.  But nobody should laud him as a hero.  He decries the dumping of Dave Cogdill, but with his stalling tactics, he helped ensure that Cogdill would be dumped.  He left Cogdill and Ashburn floating in the wind for his own gain. Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse, a man that refuses to see reasonable policy and stands on principle, or a man that acknowledges the correctness of that policy only after being bought off.

No, I’ll give it to Abel on his closing remarks.  His political career is over.

And good riddance.

So Abel’s tears found a floor, and the deal is now done.  It’s a terrible, terrible deal.  Let’s first focus on what Maldonado got, which is less than meets the eye.

• He got his open primary legislation on the ballot, but not until June 2010.  Arnold was interested in it, and so it was likely to get on that ballot anyway.  This won’t help Maldo in 2010, which was probably a condition of the deal.  Considering that it affects Congressional races as well as legislative ones, I expect Nancy Pelosi to go all in trying to defeat and I don’t expect it to pass.  Open primaries have lost on the ballot in the past.

• The constitutional amendment banning legislative pay increases during deficit years passed; the amendment cutting all legislative pay during a late budget failed.

• The 12-cent gas tax increase was cut, replaced with a slight increase to the state income tax, federal stimulus money (which was always going to fill in because it was more than budgeted for) and $600 million in unspecified line-item vetoes from the Governor, which  are going to be ugly.  Let’s just say that the huge corporate tax cut is not the first place Arnold’s going to look.

Now, that’s what Maldonado got.  Among the other goodies in this budget, besides the corporate tax cuts and the privatization of state highway projects and the rest, are:

• A $10,000 tax credit for homebuyers, but only if they buy new construction.  So a “developer bailout” when there is all kinds of existing inventory sitting on the market and lowering property values inside communities.  And now there’s an incentive for them to stay there.  Great.

• Large commercial vehicles are exempt from the increase in vehicle license fees, because… gee, I have no idea.  This is perverse, the opposite of what we should be taxing, which are inefficient vehicles.

• Rental car companies can pass VLF increases on to customers, which they probably would have done anyway, but this makes it even easier.

• One provision allows for the delay of retrofitting of heavy diesel equipment, which will maintain poor air pollution in at-risk communities, and let’s face it, kill people.  Don’t believe me, take it from the Chairman of the Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols: “There are people who will die because of this delay.”

Dan Weintraub is right – this is a budget the GOP can be proud of, because it’s a profoundly conservative budget.  Because they hold a conservative veto over it.  And they get the best of both worlds – they don’t have to vote for the budget en masse so they don’t have to own it.  In short, the hijacking worked.  And that’s a function of process, not personality.

As Jean Ross says, “If this year’s budget negotiations don’t increase public support for reducing the vote requirement for approval of a budget and tax increases, it is not clear what will.”

…there are two initiatives that have entered circulation that would repeal 2/3 for budget and taxes, and replace it with an arbitrary 55%.  It should be majority rule.  But it’s about to gather signatures.  Budgets and bad policies can eventually be changed if the process is changed.

Programming note: Robert will be on KRXA 540 AM at 8 to discuss this deal

AB 3xxx, the tax package, has now passed the Senate with 27 votes. The final votes are now going through. The deal is now done. On a related note, Maldo is the biggest hypocrite since, well, ever.  Some notes from his speech on the floor in a few minutes. See also ccleague’s twitter feed, as Scott Lay and co. are tweeting like crazy to join John Myers excellent tweets.

The final tax package is different from what it was a few days ago. It changes the income tax surcharge on upper incomes and cuts the gas tax. Sigh, i really thought we had a chance to get a twofer that would increase revenues but also help the environment.

The big drama of the night, unsurprisingly, surrounded the first measure of the night, the open primaries amendment.  Dems resisted this, with the bill initially failing by receiving only 24 votes. Steinberg was able to cajole Sens. Hancock, Romero, and Corbett back into the fold for this POS.  Sen. Padilla also stood up and said that he was supporting this only so far as putting it on the ballot.  Folks there will be much work to do between now and May 19. Defeating the spending cap should be the progressive’s first priority, but this ridiculous measure needs to be defeated.  Not only for the policy, but also to shove Maldo’s face in the piece of crap he let loose on the Senate floor.

I’ll get some video of Maldo’s speech as soon as possible, but oh it is rich.  Rich I tell you.

The rest of this will be a stream of thought blog, my apologies if it gets a bit random.

* Maldo gets his attack on John Chiang’s furniture budget, in SB 20. What a joke this man is. He manages to get 27 votes for this measure, with a combination of Dems and Reps.

* Ashburn gets his sweeteners, money for the state fairs across the state. Ashburn calls them “economic generators.” Anything that increases jobs we ought to do, he says? Oh, really? Then why is the state slashing jobs?  I’m just sayin’. I think some of these folks are getting a little sleeplessness-drunk. In an exchange, Sen. Padilla says that only somebody of “Ashburn’s stature” could carry the bill in response to Ashburn’s “jockeying” of the bill.

* Bill to set up the election for May 19 passes.

* Sen. Benoit stands up to talk about AB 5, a measure to “increase flexibility on the work week.” AKA, cut into worker’s rights.

* AB 7, a 90 day foreclosure moratorium, passes with a simple majority.

* AB 8, to gut CEQA for 11 projects and for state property, and to lift restrictions for offroad diesel operations that were regulated by CARB. Passes with a simple majority. Sad stuff.

* Sen Steinberg talks of the 45.5 hour session, longest in the history of the Senate.  He talks of difficult decisions, but “great relief”. He takes “real pride in our imperfect institution” because apparently they can solve anything if they can tackle a $40 billion deficit. Thank you to the membership for thriving under pressure, to Speaker Bass for doing her part, to Dave Cogdill for “becoming friends”. Aww, it’s a Big 5 lovefest. More props to Sen. Ducheny and the budget staff, the other Senate staff, Leg Counsel, and his own staff.

* Hey, look at that, the Senate gets Thurs and Friday off.

* Sen Steinberg moves to adjourn.

* Sen. Padilla thanks Sen. Steinberg for moving people a lot further than they thought they would come.

* Over on the Assembly side, they are wrapping up the last of the bills to make this happen. The necessary measures pass quickly, and they adjourn for the weekend.

Because he knows he can get it, Abel Maldonado is offering his list of demands in exchange for being the 27th vote on the budget.  I guess Darrell Steinberg’s “1 Republican Vote” sign got to him.

In what could be a break in state budget talks, legislative Democrats are contemplating a firm offer – approval of three constitutional amendments – from Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado as a means to closing the state’s $40 billion budget shortfall.

Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, could provide the crucial 27th vote necessary to pass a budget package that has been stalled since Saturday. In a lunch meeting at Spataro with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Maldonado asked for ballot measures to create an open primary system, prohibit legislative pay raises in deficit years and stop legislators from receiving salaries if they do not pass a budget on time.

Maldonado said in a brief interview Wednesday that there was “a good chance” for a budget vote tonight and that he wants all three of the reforms he has put forth to secure his budget vote.

Asked if he would settle for one or two, he said, “I’m asking for all three,” before rushing into a meeting with Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines. “We’re very close on the details and I just want to leave it at that.”

The move here would be the one Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog came up with – to intentionally draft the law in a way that is unconstitutional.  But there already is a draft of it, and it sounds similar enough to the law in Washington State that passed the Supreme Court’s muster.  Candidates wouldn’t have to put their party on the ballot, leading to oftentimes intentional confusion.  The vindictive part of me thinks I should sue to tangle this up in court until the day after the 2010 Controller’s primary just to screw with St. Abel.

Oh, and Schwarzenegger has wanted this for a while.  It’s entirely possible that St. Abel is a sock puppet.

The three constitutional amendments, combined with the rest of the bill, would potentially put EIGHT measures on a hastily assembled ballot in May, all of which are essentially must-pass or it’s back to the drawing board.

I hate this fucking broken system.

…the only saving grace is Roy Ashburn invoking Reagan raising taxes in 1967 on the Senate floor and shoving it in the rest of the Yacht Party’s faces.  Didn’t know he had it in him.