The race in CA-10 for the seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher features three lawmakers with long resumes at the state level.  And then there’s Anthony Woods, a young man with no prior history in elected office, but festooned with what Benjy Sarlin of The Daily Beast called the best political resume ever.  Woods is an African-American product of a single mother who found his way to West Point and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  He is a two-time Iraq war platoon leader who returned all of his men home safely and received the Bronze Star.  He is someone who, after returning home, was dismissed from the Army for challenging its Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.  But politicians don’t vote with their resumes.  They must have the conviction to vote with their principles.  I actually conducted the first interview with Woods back in April, and since then others have taken notice.  So I thought I’d return to Woods and ask him about some of the key issues facing the Congress in the coming months.  A paraphrased transcript of the conversation, executed last Wednesday, is below.

DD: Thanks for talking to me today.

Anthony Woods: No problem, thank you.

DD: So how’s it going on the campaign trail?

AW: You know, it’s really exciting.  We’re reaching that point where we’re really building some critical mass.  As you know, I did pretty well in the last fundraising quarter, we’re going to have enough money to compete with some experienced lawmakers.  The Human Rights Campaign and the LGBT Victory Fund just endorsed me, which is very exciting and shows their commitment to this campaign.  We just had a great grand opening of our office with 50 volunteers from across the area.  I’m holding a town hall meeting in Fairfield (this already happened -ed.) coming up and we’re really starting to see a path for this to happen.  It’s great.

DD: OK, well let’s start with the biggest issue on everyone’s minds right now and that’s health care.  The way it’s looking, if you’re elected you might get a vote on this.  What are your principles for this debate, and how would you like it to go.

AW: Well, I’ve been getting more concerned every day.  At first, I was thinking that Congress gets it.  They’re going to do something to deal with the health care crisis in this country that I see talking to folks every day.  But as we get into it, they’re moving further and further away.  First of all, they should have started the conversation at single payer so that if they had to move to the center they would have been coming from a better place.  What we have are two issues: access and cost.  Clearly the system right now is broken on both fronts.  50 million people go without health insurance and the costs are skyrocketing.  And the Congressional effort looks to be falling short.  I’m very concerned that there may be no public option.

DD: OK, so will you take a stand right now and say that if the bill before you has no public option that’s available the day it’s introduced, you won’t vote for it?

AW: I don’t know if I’d exactly go that far, but here’s what I would say.  I think there has to be a public option that’s efficient and effective.  And if the Democrats have some bold leadership, they can do it and do it right.  What we need is some competition in the individual marketplace.  If people have to buy insurance, we have to give them a choice that’s affordable.  So that’s my first priority.  And if the bill before me doesn’t have that, yeah, I’d have trouble voting for it.

DD: You say it’s about bold leadership, OK.  Right now, about 90% of all private insurers offer abortion coverage as part of their health care plans.  If a public option is supposed to compete with the private insurance market, doesn’t it have to offer the same kind of baseline coverage that private insurers offer, especially if they are legal medical services?

AW: I think so.  I am pro-choice, and I don’t believe in limiting the right to choose.  And if you’re giving someone health insurance who has had trouble affording it, if they have to make the difficult choice to get an abortion, they need the same kind of resources that you could get on the private market.  So I would agree with that.

DD: OK.  I want to talk about the F-22.  As you know, the Senate just voted down funding for additional funding for F-22 fighters that were designed for the Cold War and have never been used in Iraq or Afghanistan and are apparently vulnerable to rain.  What’s your reaction to that, and then I want to get into the military budget more generally.

AW: I support stripping the funding.  My view is that if the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President all say we don’t need them, we probably don’t.  And regardless of the impact on jobs, we should listen to that.  I think we need in procurement a short-term view and a long-term view.  We should obviously be prepared to defend the country, but we should be prudent with those funds, because it is real money.

DD: The F-22 funding and some other funding may stop, but the military budget will increase this year.  And we still spend more on military activities than any other country on Earth combined.  How can we continue to do that, isn’t it unsustainable?

AW: My deployments in Iraq taught me that the military cannot be the solution to all of our problems overseas.  Because we have this mindset currently, we’ve created a situation where the military is providing resources that other agencies could provide.  We shouldn’t have the Defense Department doing the work of the State Department or NGOs or US AID.  I think if we shift some of that burden, it will actually make the troops safer, because we can focus resources on protecting them and providing them the equipment they need, instead of making the military the sole solution to every problem overseas.

DD: I want to tell you about a story I saw in the Wall Street Journal.  It showed that the top 1% of wage earners in this country, the executives, the wealthy, are now earning 35% of all compensation.  How do you react to that?

AW: Wow.  That says a lot.  You know, these are tough times, and when you see a tiny fraction like that benefiting from the resources of this county, I think it says that they need to sacrifice.  We’re in a situation where we implemented tax cuts in the middle of a war.  We’re trying to figure out how to pay for health care.  And the top 1%, they’re doing pretty well.  I think we need some shared sacrifice.

DD: Why do you think it’s so difficult for Democrats to simply say what you just said in that way?  Even the surtax they’ve come up with in the House to pay for health care is getting dismissed.  Why can’t we just make the case that America is worth paying for, especially for those who use the public commons so much?

AW: I really think it starts with people who are willing to say that.  And it’s why I want to be there representing this community in Washington.  My opponents are mostly the same politicians who we keep sending to Washington again and again, and I think we need someone who isn’t afraid to say that, you know, the country has provided a lot to a small group of people, and they should give a little bit back.

DD: OK, let’s move on.  The foreclosure crisis is still hitting California hard, and so far the solutions that have come from Congress hasn’t worked.  What are some of your ideas to keep people in their homes?

AW: This is something I hear about from people every day when I’m campaigning.  In California, we had a moratorium on foreclosures for a while, and I think that’s part of the equation, but if you don’t provide loan modifications for people, eventually that’s not going to be enough.  The immediate crisis we have is that people are losing their homes, so we need to make the necessary adjustments to allow people to refinance.  After that immediate crisis, I think we have to clean up the regulatory environment, both in the mortgage market and also in banking.

DD: I’ve heard an interesting proposal called “right-to-rent,” where people facing foreclosure can pay rent on the home for a number of years, they get to stay where they are, the banks have a revenue stream and don’t have to deal with a blighted property, and the community gains from not having foreclosed properties on their block.  What do you think of that?

AW: Sounds good.  A lot of people are suffering right now.  And it’s traumatic to uproot yourself and have to leave your community, to have your kids leave schools.  So anything that keeps folks in homes and communities sounds like a smart idea to me.  It’s certainly better than what we’re doing.

DD: But how do we institute something like that when the banks, in the words of Dick Durbin, “own the place”?

AW: That’s a tough problem.  You know, the healthiest banks right now are the ones who separated investment and lending.  And I think that most people I meet are frustrated to see the banks get us to this point.  They want common-sense regulatory solutions to change that environment.  I think the banks will have a real problem on their hands if they keep pushing and pushing, and people don’t see a change in their daily lives while the banks rake in tons of money.

DD: OK, but what’s the theory of change?  How do we get all this done?  When you have a situation where special interests rule and campaign contribution money means more than constituents, how can we fight for progressive outcomes in a Congress that appears to care more about the next election?

AW: Well, I think we have to elect people who are accountable to the ones who sent them.  For me, I will give as much access to everyday people as possible, and let them shape my agenda rather than special interests and lobbyists.  And I think we need to elect more people who have this philosophy.  We’re going to have to do it one representative at a time.  And I think that’s one of the reasons why my campaign is taking off.  We cannot expect different results with the same politicians dealing with the same problems year after year.  So I don’t know if we can deal with everything at once, but we’ll have to do it one representative at a time.

DD: OK, last question.  Obviously, here in California, we’re looking at a terrible budget and lots of structural problems.  What can be done at the federal level to perhaps help the state out of this mess?

AW: Well, just looking at the state budget deal, it’s basically more of the same.  There’s a crisis of leadership in Sacramento, and it produced a budget full of accounting tricks that just kick the can down the road.  It’s clear that the system is broken, and that’s why I’d prefer a Constitutional convention and at the least getting rid of the 2/3 rule for budgets.  California is such an important economy, it’s a big chunk of the country, and when we aren’t doing well, the country suffers.  At the federal level, I think we need smart investment.  The state is a donor state, it doesn’t get back in funds what it pays in taxes.  So I’d like to help reduce that.  And also, we can take advantage of the resources and opportunities in California.  This state has the chance to be a new energy leader, through wind and solar.  And so I’d like to see those kinds of smart investments in California.

DD: Do you support a second stimulus, focused on state fiscal stabilization funds to save those jobs that rely on state spending?

AW: I think we’re having a hard time distributing the funds from the first stimulus.  So I think we have to give it some time to work.  But we are definitely at a crisis point in this state, I see it every day, so I think we need to monitor the situation.  And we have to make sure there’s a safety net in place for the people of California.

DD: OK, great, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

AW: Thank you.

People seemed to really engage with this post about a Constitutional convention, so I wanted to follow up with some of my thoughts for what a convention could tackle and what it could look like.  As it happens I attended a town hall meeting about a proposed ConCon a couple weeks ago in Santa Monica, featuring Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies, Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council, Steven Hill and Mark Paul of the New America Foundation, Asm. Julia Brownley (AD-41), Santa Monica Mayor Pam O’Connor and LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl.

At the root, a Constitutional convention must concern itself with restoring confidence in government.  Right now, that’s at an all-time low, especially after budget agreements hashed out in secret that defy the will of the people and an erosion in the public trust in lawmakers to do the right thing in Sacramento.  Government is not responsive, in fact in many cases it cannot Constitutionally be responsive to the popular will.  The institutions have become paralyzed and captive to special interest lobbying.  We have ten lobbyists for every legislator in Sacramento.  And we have turned over the reins to a new branch of government, the ballot, and anything significant must be mandated by a vote of the people.  As Julia Brownley, now in her second term, said, “Government structure is broken and we need to fix it… I didn’t understand until I set foot in the Legislature the paralysis and gridlock that kills the system.”  I think Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, who is carrying Constitutional convention legislation in the Senate, put it well when he said that California remains at the vanguard with anything that can be accomplished on a majority-vote basis.  Anything with a 2/3 threshold, in other words anything fiscal, is a mess. And it needs to be solved.

So how would a convention, the first of its kind since 1879, be structured? (flip)

 Right now, only the Legislature, with a 2/3 vote, can call for one.  But the Bay Area Council and others who have studied this believe they can go to the ballot with two measures – one changing the Constitution to allow the people to call for a convention, and another to call for one.  These can even be accomplished on the same ballot; while some have raised legal objections to this, this is pretty much how a recall election works, with the recall and replacement on the same ballot.  Those who want to maintain the status quo because it works for them may disagree, but the California Supreme Court has clearly shown very wide latitude on votes of the people under the current system.

Other major issues to be hashed out with a convention are the scope and the delegate selection.  Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council has said that everything within government should be on the table, which worries some that a Pandora’s box will be open, an opportunity to mess with fundamental rights.  First of all, that’s the case right now, as last November proved.  Second, I do believe there would be eventual problems with any document that nullified rights granted by the federal Constitution (the basis of the current Prop. 8 lawsuit).  What we’re really talking about with a convention is a process to create a more sustainable structure, dealing with electoral issues, governance issues, fiscal/budget issues, and direct democracy issues.  That’s a fair bit of territory, and I don’t see any need to expand beyond that.

Then there’s the thorny issue of delegate selection.  Steven Hill explains in a study of the issue that there are three basic means for selecting delegates: through appointments, through elections, or through a random selection consistent with state demographics.  There are plusses and minuses to all of them, but Hill reasons that the appointment process could wind up looking like patronage, and the election process mired by our useless campaign finance laws.  Both would fall to the whims of the current broken process and could be hijacked by special interests seeking input in the results of a convention.  They would also wind up looking a lot like the Legislature, which doesn’t go far to renewing confidence and trust in government.  So Hill falls on the side of random selection as the “least worst” option.

Pros: Random selection would be the best method for ensuring a representative body; random selection of “average citizens” brings a sense of grassroots legitimacy to the process, which would give the proposals of the constitutional convention credibility with the voters; random selection might be the best process for shielding delegates against special interest influence; random selection has the gloss of being something new and different, never been tried, and therefore may have the greatest potential to capture the imagination of the public and the media.

Cons: Random selection of “average citizens” would not necessarily guarantee sufficient expertise on the part of the delegates. A thorough educational process would be necessary, and it would be important that the educational process for delegates was designed to prevent “capture” by any particular special interest or perspective. The selection process would also need to weed out any delegates who are not are sufficiently committed to participate for many months.

I don’t think capturing the imagination of the media is a good reason to do it, but Hill has cited examples of citizen’s commissions in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and in New York City dealing with the World Trade Center redevelopment, with fairly positive reviews.

I think where you fall along these lines can be best determined by your theories of government.  If you think that the system needs to be gamed for particular outcomes, you probably want an election that would allow the participation of various special interests.  If you believe that good government and progressive government are analogous, that an iron-clad structure itself need not be partisan, but just allow the prevailing philosophy of the majority to have sway over the results, you may be interested in a random selection based on demographics (and, I would add, party ID).  Right now, we have a progressive legislature and a conservative system, which frustrates efforts at accountability.  A small-d democratic system would not only be more fair than the current system of minority rule, and it would not only be more helpful for the voters trying to determine who is responsible for what happens in government, but it would actually be more fiscally responsible.  The Two Santa Claus Theory that dictates we can have robust services and endlessly low taxes forces government to resort to borrowing and accounting gimmicks to cover deficits, which lead to larger deficits pushed out to the future.  Spending mandates like Prop. 98 haven’t even worked to protect school funding – we’ve become the worst state on spending K-12 under that mandate.  A clear set of rules that resists enshrining policy but allows policy to work unimpeded through a framework of government seems to be the best practice here.

Then there’s our failed experiment with direct democracy, which brought about many of the constrictions under which current government now labors, such as the crazy 2/3 requirements, which allow the majority to say that the minority blocks their wishes while allowing the minority to claim that they have no power because they’re in the minority.

What do I think a Constitutional convention needs to include?

• ending the 2/3 requirements and restoring democracy to the fiscal process over the tyranny of the minority, and returning decisions for spending and taxation to elected representatives

• two-year budget cycles and performance-based budgeting to try and engender a long-term approach

• indirect democracy, where the legislature can either work out the item on the ballot with proponents and pass it through their chamber, or amend items that reach the ballot.  In addition, we need a higher barrier for Constitutional amendments and changes to the process of signature gathering.

• any ballot-box budgeting must include a dedicated funding source – “paygo for initiatives”

• smaller legislative districts, either by expanding the Assembly or moving to a unicameral legislature with 150 or more members.

• elimination of the current term limits, the tighest in the nation, with more of a happy medium

• instant runoff voting for state legislative vacancies to speed the process of filling them

• local government gets the local resources they collect without them routing through Sacramento

Those are a few of the things I’d like to see addressed, and I’m sure people have additional ones.  The crisis we currently have in California presents an opportunity for new thinking about government and how to manage the largest state in the union and one of the largest economies in the world.  Despite the doom and gloom, California retains its vibrancy, its diversity, its abundance.  Only the structure under with it governs itself has failed, and that failure has seeped into everyday life.  Lifting that structure will be like lifting a heavy weight off the backs of the citizenry.  We can lead a path to a better future.

Related – Repair California

Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign the FY2010 budget revision quietly tomorrow, with up to $1 billion dollars of line-item cuts that could potentially cause more pain for California citizens.  He’ll claim that he was acting responsibly and in the best interests of the people.  As CalBuzz says today in about as shrill a way as imaginable, it’s a load of crap.

“(T)he biggest winner to emerge from our negotiations is California,” the governor bragged, “our state’s legacy, its priorities, and its budget stability.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong!!

Schwarzenegger’s triumphalist braying was little more than a one-step-ahead-of-the-posse exercise in spin control, a pathetically transparent bid to establish a positive narrative for the budget disaster over which he’s presided, in hopes that voters and his suck-up pals in the national media will buy his story without bothering to check it out.

(NOTE TO NATIONAL POLITICAL WRITERS: Schwarzenegger did NOT solve or stabilize California’s budget. Despite his assertion to the contrary, his budget – passed in February and now revised twice – actually RAISED TAXES by $12.5 BILLION. With the latest revision, he threw off enough ballast to keep his hot air balloon afloat but in no particular direction.) […]

In truth, Arnold’s entire tenure has been one continuous failure of leadership. This is just the latest chapter.

From his first days in office (when he sowed the seeds of today’s never-ending fiscal crisis by his irresponsible cut in the vehicle license fee) to his ill-considered $15 billion borrowing bond (which helped make interest payments the fastest growing item in the budget) and his current shameful spending plan (which gives the University of California a major push into mediocrity while continuing the slow death of K-12 education and punishing the aged, blind and disabled), he has been little more than a narcissistic, tone-deaf poseur, surrounded by sycophants and devoid of principle or conviction.

Allow me to sit up and take notice at the shrill-ness.

And their points are completely inarguable.  It’s not just this budget revision, which makes draconian cuts and multiple faulty assumptions of revenue in order to pretend to fill a partially self-created deficit (we’re not getting $1 billion from the federal government for Medi-Cal reimbursement, for example, nor will we sell the State Compensation Insurance Fund for $1 billion).  It’s that his entire tenure has had the goal of enforcing the tax revolt and eroding the New Deal consensus that Californians still by and large support as an electorate, though they lack the governmental structure to carry it out.  And in that respect, he was wildly successful.  Except Californians have figured out implicitly that this vision of the future is abhorrent, and while they haven’t yet put their finger on who to blame, they could do worse than looking at the Governor.  It is no accident that Schwarzenegger is viewed unfavorably by both parties, having driven the state completely into a ditch and hastened the near-depression in which we find ourselves.  The structure of government resists workable solutions to our fiscal problems.  But Schwarzenegger’s reckless management has greased the skids and achieved nothing for the citizenry but future pain and suffering.

In the latest outrage, he enthusiastically endorsed a budget process that will help push the whole country into a deeper recession by canceling out the impact of the federal stimulus package.

Tens of billions of dollars are cascading into California from the federal stimulus package, but the economic oomph is being weakened by massive cutbacks in state spending.

The financial crosscurrents show up in places like downtown Sacramento’s old railyard, now undergoing a huge facelift. Stimulus money from Washington, D.C., will help move the train tracks, a key element of the plan. Separately, though, the slashing of redevelopment funding by the Legislature might derail a housing project at the site.

This push-pull effect will play out in education, transportation and other sectors. Economists say the likely result will be prolonged pain and a weaker recovery despite the $85 billion coming to California from the stimulus program over the next two years or so. Unemployment stands at 11.6 percent in Sacramento and statewide, and is forecast to exceed 13 percent next year.

The state budget “absolutely … will blunt the impact of the stimulus,” said Chris Thornberg, head of Beacon Economics consulting in Los Angeles.

Remember all this when you see some Twitpic of the Governor brandishing his pen and telling his list of followers tomorrow that he “fixed” the budget.  The fix is in, to be sure – and the people will feel the results.

In the wake of the latest, but by no means the last, budget mess in California, I continue to believe that the only way to break the deeply negative cycle of fiscal dysfunction and budgetary gridlock is through a Constitutional convention that restores democracy and provides sensible, workable government in the state of California.  You’ll be interested to know that this belief actually transcends party lines.  Tom Karako directs the Golden State Center at the Claremont Institute, one of the nation’s most conservative think tanks.  And even he agrees that the state’s Constitution needs to change to better serve the public.  I haven’t previously seen a conception of what a conservative vision for a Constitutional convention would look like, and so I think it’s worth analyzing it to see their preferred options.  Karako first says:

If Californians do rewrite the Constitution, it should be revised to resemble more closely the concise federal Constitution: more responsible legislators and executives, stronger control of the bureaucracy and less direct democracy.

Then he comes up with several issues that appear nowhere in the federal Constitution.  Here are his six proposals:

1. Part-time Legislature

2. Hard spending cap

3. Two-year budgeting cycle

4. Eliminate the two-thirds supermajority requirement for budgets

5. Unified executive branch

6. Repeal ballot-box budgeting

The first four are either irrelevant to the federal Constitution or in direct conflict to federal Constitutional provisions.  But I will soldier on and take them in kind.

Karako clarifies that his vision of a “part-time legislature” would not be a citizen legislature, and would include the same salaries and responsibilities as today.  With all due respect, then, we already have this.  State legislative sessions, in theory, open in January and end on August 31, and there are numerous recesses in between those dates.  The only reason it seems lately like the legislature is always at work is because four extraordinary sessions have been called in the past year and a half to deal with the budget mess.  Our legislature works around six months out of the year in less extraordinary circumstances.  That sounds part-time to me.

This notion of a hard spending cap has been soundly rejected by the voters twice in the past four years.  It is certainly not a feature of the federal Constitution, and it does not take into account emergency spending needs, the outpacing of inflation over wages in areas like health care, and multiple other provisions.  States with spending caps have seen their quality of life suffer and their state rankings plummet (see TABOR in Colorado).  This would in my view be disastrous, and obviously it’s the major bone of contention between liberals and conservatives.

A two-year budget cycle actually sounds prudent to me.  I would supplement it with an advisory long-term budgeting benchmark that would bring the concept of long-term planning back into state government, but anything that looks beyond the horizon could improve the quality of state budgets.

Conservatives have begun to relent on the 2/3 rule for passing a state budget, while keeping in the requirement for taxes, for somewhat selfish reasons.  I agree that the current system eliminates accountability for both sides of the aisle, and letting the majority rule on these issues would allow the people to decide the results of that course of action.  But Karako doesn’t take this to the logical conclusion, that a budget is composed of taxes and spending, and that only with a full repeal of both of these 2/3 provisions would we have representative democracy in this state.  He wants to hold one party responsible for budgeting while tying their hands on how to go about instituting that budget.

After citing positively how other states have part-time legislatures, and negatively how only two other states require a 2/3 vote to pass a budget, Karako calls for a “unified executive branch” without mentioning that practically no other state has its Governor appoint all additional Constitutional officers.  Some states have Governors appoint certain various members, but not the entire slate.  This and the next idea show a typical conservative contempt for the will of the people.  Democracy, even direct democracy, is not the problem with California.  (This “unified executive branch” is also a cover for vesting greater authority in the executive to engage in, as Karako says, “firing and controlling non-elected bureaucrats and public employee unions,” or union-busting, in the vernacular.)

And that leads us to Karako’s idea to repeal all ballot-box budgeting, where he does not specify between different types of ballot-box budgeting.  Those measures with funding sources provide no strain on the budget process because they do not impact the General Fund.  Unfunded mandates do represent a problem, and reformers have devised a solution, essentially “paygo” for ballot initiatives, requiring that they include a funding source before presenting them to voters.  Karako, instead, wants to repeal all voter-approved measures and place them under the General Fund.  I also believe in the indirect initiative, allowing the legislature a crack at either passing a ballot measure themselves in consultation with the proponents, or changing the language with amendments to better reflect current priorities.

On one thing I agree with Karako; “California needs constitutional reform before we can expect sustained fiscal reform.”  I don’t think his ideas hold to his belief in drawing on the wisdom of the US Constitution; however, I do see some common ground, on two-year budget cycles, on the need for democratic rule, on initiative reform.  My belief is that a Constitutional convention could bring together the entire rich diversity of the state to discuss, debate and decide on these issues, coming to a decision that will improve representative government in the state.  I’ll see Mr. Karako there.

UPDATE by Robert: For a progressive vision of a constitutional convention, the Courage Campaign’s Citizens Plan to Reform California (CPR for California) is a good place to start. I plan to write more about it this week.

In between budget posts, I’ve lately been in a bit of a tiff with Chris Kelly, an Attorney General candidate and former Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, over his stale, predictable fearmongering about potential early prison releases.  There are a bunch of other estimable candidates in the Attorney General’s race, one who did himself a ton of good yesterday by leading the fight against the offshore drilling proposal.  So maybe I shouldn’t take too much time on Kelly.  But there’s a short-term policy fight coming up next month to determine how to implement $1.2 billion in cuts to the corrections budget, and with some good activism and common sense we can stare down the Tough on Crime crowd and post a needed victory for sensible criminal justice policies.  Therefore it’s worth looking at Kelly’s latest post:

The prison release plan is supposed to save $1.2 billion, but that’s just accounting trickery. In fact, a Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics study finds that nearly 70% of early-released inmates are rearrested within three years, 20% of them for violent crime. That will mean more than $3 billion in increased costs from crime while causing serious harm to hundreds of thousands of innocent victims.

I’ve spoken to police chiefs, law enforcement groups and civic associations throughout California about the issue, and they’re deeply worried about the crime wave this scheme will unleash. It will be hard enough to make San Jose a safer community in tough economic times without the problems caused by early release.

Obviously, Kelly hasn’t talked to the California Police Chiefs Association, which endorsed the plan as a smart step to begin to move away from the failed prison policies of the last thirty years.  Foremost among these new ideas is the concept of targeting resources – instead of warehousing the terminally ill or blanket strict supervision on everyone released regardless of determining possibility of recidivism, we can put resources into programs that provide opportunity for prisoners to pay their debt to society and move on.  This deal doesn’t do all of that, but it does, for example, put ill and infirm prisoners under home detention or in a care facility, which doesn’t impact public safety and saves money.  It offers incentives for prisoners to complete rehabilitation plans.  It reviews the cases of illegal immigrants in jails instead of just tossing them in the lap of the ICE to deal with, which would actually be the kind of misguided policy Kelly warns against.  And most important, it includes an independent sentencing commission, outside of politics, which can look at our sentencing laws and make recommendations for the legislature to adopt on an up-or-down vote.

Using the buzzword of “early release” of “dangerous prisoners” is an old Tough on Crime ploy from way back, evoking memories of the Willie Horton ad in the 1988 Presidential race.  It’s irresponsible and not relevant to what is being discussed.  We have the perfect Tough on Crime prison policy right now – and it’s not working in every respect, to the extent that federal courts have stepped in to take control of it.  Overcrowded prisons cannot fulfill their core mission of rehabilitating those jailed, and that’s especially true where nonviolent offenders who need medical treatment for addiction and not incarceration are concerned.  Brute force has not worked in making the state safer and has certainly caused our budget to skyrocket.  And the truth is that more sensible policies can save money and create better prisons at the same time.

We need real reform in prison and parole policy, through concentrated resources, community corrections, and maintaining manageable prison capacity for those who really need to be there, and what will get decided in the legislature next month represents an important step.  It can be easily derailed by fearmongering from the likes of Chris Kelly, trying to win an election on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised, on whom such brute-force policies typically rain down.

Over the next month I’ll be looking far more closely at this issue, as it’s the first big battle in regaining control of our state.  And it’s a winnable fight.

So the Assembly is wrapping up their budget session, and it turns out that the Assembly came up $1.1 billion dollars short of the Senate’s solutions.  Oil drilling failed, and the local government raid on HUTA (gas taxes) failed as well.

So where does that leave us?  These bills will go to the governor, and since there isn’t concurrence, it will be roughly a $23 billion solution rather than $24 billion.  But, the Governor has a line-item veto.  He can make various cuts with his blue pencil.  But $1.1 billion?  Who knows.  That seems like a tall order.

Considering what Schwarzenegger did the last time a partial solution was handed to him, I guess there’s an outside shot that he’ll just say no and open a new extraordinary session.  But he’ll probably just line-item some, and maybe make up the difference by eating into what is now a $900 million dollar budget reserve.

Is everybody ready to be back here in October?

…We’ll have a couple days for final analyses, but let’s remember that this is a terrible budget and a dark day for California.

…Let me clarify.  The Governor can make line-item cuts but he doesn’t necessarily have to, because this is a budget revision.  He can also shift around the size of the reserve.  In the end, he doesn’t actually have to be in balance for a revision; that’s a Constitutional need at the beginning of the process, as I understand it, not now.  Clearly from the Governor’s remarks, he’s not going to veto the whole thing, so this is the “solution,” for now.  There also may be Constitutional problems with some of the stuff passed.

…Apparently, the Governor said, jubilantly, “We missed the iceberg”.  First, WE didn’t miss anything, YOU dumped the iceberg on poor people.  And second, if you really think you’re in the clear, um, don’t look behind you.

The Assembly has gone into a deep cocoon, only occasionally popping up to finish a vote that has been placed on hold.  The most recent one was SB12, which set cuts for general government.  That’s not necessarily in the land of controversial votes – the local government raids, the offshore drilling proposal and the return payment of Prop. 98 maintenance of effort funds in future years are the major stumbling blocks.  But SB12 couldn’t get the 54 votes needed for passage, stalling out at 51.  Now, it’s possible that this was just a delay tactic while negotiations and arm-twisting continue over the other issues.  But the longer this plays out, the more opportunity for a collapse.

The Senate is in adjournment.  They are gone until August.  They jammed the Assembly and now the Assembly has to find a way out of the mess.  If you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that this is over, well, I think we might have a long way to go.  Remember that the Assembly has one less person in it now than it did in February – Curren Price moved up to the Senate.  That means additional votes are needed, most likely from Republicans, for these measures.

I would be slightly surprised if these remaining measures didn’t pass.  But the going is very slow, and there’s still time to weigh in and whip your Assemblymembers, particularly on the contentious issues.

…both parties have gone into caucus.  What does newly independent Juan Arambula do at this point?

This is FAR from over.

…so the Assembly has come back into session.  Karen Bass says “we have been in session for 24 hours and we are ready to finish.”  We’ll see if the lawmakers agre…

…They just moved the HUTA taking (that’s the local gas tax bill) to the inactive file.  I think this means that the securitization of redevelopment funds must pass or there’s really no bill.

…They’re about to vote on Prop. 1A borrowing of local government funds.  There are technical problems so viewers at home can’t see the vote… OK, 57-12, measure passes.  Prop. 1A taking is complete.

…We’re up to AB14, the bill that accomplishes the suspension.  It’s a recapitulation of the 1A suspension…. and it runs aground, three votes shy of passage.  Local government safe for the moment, though things can change on a dime.

…one vote left for passage on this, remaining members getting lobbied furiously… Asm. Salas is the only holdout.

They put that one on call, and move to AB26, the redevelopment agency scheme.  This should be very interesting.  Still 5 bills away from full passage.

…I guess redevelopment only needed a majority vote, so they managed to get enough.  Measure passed 41-23.  I can’t believe they’re really going ahead with that scam.  The lobbyists in the City of Industry will party tonight!

…they lifted the call on SB12, the general government cuts, and there are 26 no votes, 1 too many, so they’ll have to flip somebody.

…if I hear “all those vote who desire to vote” one more time…

…Dave Jones caved, they got it through with another flip, 54-24.  General govt. cuts done.

…AB3 lifted, not sure what this one is about.  Came up a few votes short… AB3 is the education bill, with the Prop. 98 payback.  Still not getting through.

…they just got the Prop. 1A local government raid bill through, 54-25.

Trying again on Ab3… they got it through, 55-19.  It looks like education is done, too.  I think drilling may be all that’s left.

…AB23, the final bill, the offshore drilling bill, is on the floor now.  Chuck DeVore is grandstanding talking about it.

…Pedro Nava reminds lawmakers of the Jan. 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.  They need to know what they might be doing.

…Wes Chesbro, who represents one-third of the California coastline, urges a no vote.

…Bill Monning speaking against the bill.

…I’ll wrap up after we’re done, but ditching the HUTA gas tax raid blows about a $750M hole in the budget, and if drilling goes down, $100M more.  The Governor has a blue pencil, of course, so he can make the cuts needed by himself to compensate.

…Noreen Evans, a member of the leadership and chair of the Budget committee, is voting no.  I don’t know if this passes, it’ll be close.

…Curt Hagman (Yacht Party) pleads to “think outside the box” …

…Juan Arambula, ex-Democrat, expresses his support for the bill.  Says he enjoys the beaches!  And that surfboards are made out of petroleum, so we have to drill offshore (?????)

…Julia Brownley quotes President Richard Nixon on the 1969 SB oil spill.  Looks like a lot of people will get their say.

…Ted Gaines thinks we “won’t have to worry about foreign oil” if we approve this lease.  Because one platform can supply the oil for 38 million people.

…apparently, if other states have no income tax, they can have an oil severance tax, but if you have one, then you can’t have oil severance tax.  I didn’t know that construction.

… Mike Villines, former Assembly leader, is now up.  “I know we want green jobs, but I hope we are open to all jobs.”  Hurt me.

…vote coming up in a sec…

…28-43, drilling FAILS.  So about $850million short in the budget.  Will the Governor clean it up himself?

That’s why the Assembly has stalled, we’re hearing.  The education part of the budget bill would statutorily put into language a payback of $11 billion in education funds denied to schools under the Proposition 98 mandate.  The Yacht Party doesn’t want to pay it back.  And that’s because they don’t want to pay for it in the future.

The result of not writing into language a payback of these funds will be that education interests will sue, and win, and it will likely cost the state more in the long run.  But you can say “it will cost the state more in the long run” about virtually every aspect of the budget, so why should that trouble anyone?

…so the Assembly came back in session briefly to vote for permanent freezing of COLA in social services programs, and CalWorks and IHSS anti-fraud measures.  It got 43 votes, and only needed a majority, so it passes.  Still nothing on the Prop. 98 payback changes.

…Unbelievable.  This is from Asm. Dave Jones:

Asm. Reeps holding up $24 B in budget solutions due to spat with Senate Reeps. Asm. Reeps kidding themselves if they think Senate returning

7 minutes ago from mobile web

Asm. Reeps mad because Senate Republicans because Sen. Reeps sent over one bill not two on educ. cuts & Prop 98 repayment. Dont they talk?

10 minutes ago from mobile web

I’m guessing they’re pissed because they wanted to be able to vote against the repayment – which could pass by majority vote – and for the cuts to education.  Complete political posturing.  Too late, the Senate jammed them, and now they’ll either walk the plank or blow up the whole thing.  Because they want to be successful thieves that don’t pay back what they steal.

Maybe you’ve been following along, but if you haven’t, the Senate essentially passed all of their budget bills, albeit with difficulty, and adjourned a session that started last night around 7:30pm at 6:16 this morning.  The Assembly is still working through some of the final trailer bills, including the local government raids and the offshore drilling proposal at Tranquillon Ridge.  Here’s an incomplete roundup from the LA Times.

The worst elements of the bill were passed while everyone was asleep.  They must be very proud of their work.

And of course, this is a rolling, perpetual crisis.  Dan Walters is correct today when he says that the state now operates on 5-month budget cycles.

There have been some discussions about shifting to a two-year budget cycle to ease the one-year cycle’s tight – and usually unmet – timetable. In reality, though, the state has shifted to a five-month cycle, with the latest version of the budget, which was undergoing the dreary drill of adoption Thursday night, being the latest example […]

If the five-month cycle holds true, the deal’s deficiencies will be acknowledged in October, when the state must redeem the IOUs it’s sending to creditors. And then legislators will return to Sacramento to be entertained by lobbyists, plug the new holes and collect about $1,200 a week in tax-free per diem checks.

In January, the governor will propose a 2010-11 budget and the game will begin again.

It’s as much that the legislature cannot fathom the extremity of the real budget problems as that the cumulative effect of kicking the can becomes greater with every kick.  Of course, there’s a way out – you could reduce useless tax breaks to corporations and increase revenue.  But that’s deeply unserious and verboten.

If ever the need for a Constitutional convention to fix the broken system in Sacramento has become clear, it’s now, when 40 years of progress has been reversed in the dead of night.

I’m going to have to hit the sack now, I’m actually on NPR’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin in the morning (check your local listings), not talking about the California budget but about health care.  So I needs my beauty rest.

Feel free to chat and hopefully Robert can take you through.

UPDATE by Robert: I’ll be here for a bit longer. Assembly just approved AB 22, which includes the sale of the OC Fairgrounds.

…Capitol Weekly reports long delay in Senate is due to lack of votes for thieving local government funds. “Steinberg says both Dem and Reep caucuses are searching for votes.” We’ll see how that goes.

…to quickly update, the oil drilling provision barely passed the Senate, 21-18.  Sen. Steinberg says he has the votes to put through the local government raid and he’ll do so by 6:30AM.

…the Senate got the minimum required votes for the takings of local gov’t money, including the redevelopment agency securitization.  They managed to bang that through, with several Republican votes.  The Senate passed the entire budget and they’re done.  The Assembly is still working through it.  The Republicans are in a caucus.