(From Jim Evans, Communications Director for Sen. Darrell Steinberg. This is a critical case for the future of the state.
– promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Today, attorneys for Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg filed this complaint on the Pro Tem’s behalf against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in San Francisco Superior Court (disclosure: I’m Sen. Steinberg’s Communications Director).
The first line of the complaint says it all: “This case is about separation of powers.”
The filing outlines how exactly the Governor overstepped his constitutional authority in making almost $500 million line-item vetoes to mostly human services programs. As the Pro Tem said Friday, Californians elected a Governor, not an emperor. The filing explains that the Governor can only use line item veto authority to cut “appropriations,” and not the revised reductions in existing, previously enacted appropriations in the Legislature’s July 24 budget bill.
From the filing:
The Governor has overstepped his authority. A reduction in an existing appropriation is not subject to line-tem veto. If the Governor wants to veto such reductions, he must veto the entire bill in which they are contained. He cannot decrease them further to arrive at an amount that he believes is appropriate and then sign the bill into law, nor can he veto specific control language that does not make an appropriation.
What’s really at stake is the protection of the equal relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches of state government. For years, the Governor has sought increased mid-year cut authority to make budget cuts on his own, but voters have denied him this power. This Los Angeles Times editorial from August 5th raises the appropriate questions about the Governor’s actions.
The filing does a great job explaining not just these constitutional issues, but also what’s at stake for the Californians who depend on the services that the governor illegally cut.
The issue in this case is particularly stark because of the context in which it arises. Virtually all of the reductions made by the Governor are to funding for the most vulnerable members of our society: the poor, the young, and the very old. In a time of severe economic crisis, the Legislature was forced to cut deeply into programs that form the social safety net for many Californians. It did so after careful study and long, often heated, deliberation. The end product was a budget act that no one liked, but that represented the considered decision of the Legislature that it was willing to cut this far, but no farther. The Governor, however, made additional cuts of almost $500 million that will directly and disastrously affect the lives of the poorest among us.
The filing asks the court “to order the Controller to disregard the Governor’s purported vetoes of the budget items described more fully below and to declare that the Governor’s purported vetoes are null and void.”
because these citizen were most likely to attract help from Washington.
That’s the moral equivalent of maiming your children and sending them out onto the streets of Calcutta to beg, but could that be his motive?
I’ve read over the legislative counsel’s opinion letter 3 or 4 times now, and I’ve look at the case law that they have in support.
I’m not sure they have a slam dunk on this. You can’t ever really be certain, of course, with the Cal Supremes.
I’ll just be interested to see some more of the briefing to see if they can sew up a few of the things in that opinion letter.
While I fully support this lawsuit, we should not let the outrage over the governor’s vetoes hide the fact that Sen. Steinberg, Speaker Bass and most of their Democratic colleagues approved one of the most unfair, regressive budget agreements in California history.