We’ve heard this one before, but the Assembly will apparently vote on a prison “reform” package today, one that does not meet the $1.2 billion in cuts to the overall prison budget the Assembly supported in July, and which excises the sentencing commission that would actually get to the root cause of the overcrowding crisis by reining in 30 years of expanded sentences from the Legislature.  This makes manly tough guy Alberto Torrico very proud, but the Senate may not go along with it, if this SacBee report is any indication:

If the Assembly approves the plan as expected Monday, Steinberg will withhold concurrence in the Senate until several prison-related issues are settled.

“We’re going to wait for a package that includes reform and gets to the budget number that we need,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg wants the Assembly to act on creating a commission to overhaul sentencing guidelines and for the lower house to adopt an alternative custody program that could release, with electronic monitoring, some nonviolent offenders who are aged or infirm, or whose sentences expire in less than a year.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the Senate-passed plan, which contains both the sentencing commission and the alternative custody proposals.

The Assembly plan is a parole reform plan.  That’s worthwhile and needed, but it’s not a long-range plan that will prevent the Legislature or a federal court from having to make the same decisions about early release 10 years down the road.  It’s also not a short-range plan, as it cuts $220 million less from the budget than is required and leaves that hole to be dealt with later – with cuts to what?  Education?  Health care?  Maybe the Assembly can explain where they would cut in order to keep the terminally ill or blind people with one leg locked up and on the public dole.

It’s a sad commentary that the Department of Corrections is more committed to advancing reform than the State Assembly.

Last Thursday, the CDCR announced it would close the largest youth prison in California, diverting young offenders to local facilities. This is one of the real reforms our coalition has called for to improve public safety and end wasteful prison spending. As part of the People’s Budget Fix, we have proposed keeping young offenders at the local level, closing all six of the costly and ineffective youth prisons, and diverting half of the budget currently spent on these prisons to local programs. If fully implemented, this reform would save $200 million a year.

Closing the largest youth prison is an excellent start which will save $30-40 million by the CDCR’s estimate. But we’ll need to do more if we’re going to come up with $1.2 billion in savings. The need for action could not be more urgent: we must find those savings in the Corrections’ budget to avoid more draconian cuts to education, health care and other public safety programs like domestic violence shelters and drug treatment programs.

Moreover, most Californians agree we need to cut wasteful prison spending. Polls show that most Californians think we should cut the Corrections budget and we should protect funding for education. Most Californians also agree that prison should be reserved for violent offenders, not people who commit petty offenses.

Yet, the Assembly cannot agree on what seems like common sense to the rest of us: people who commit low-level crimes like petty theft and simple drug possession should be punished on the local level, not in prison cells at a cost of nearly $50,000 per person per year. It shocks the conscience that Assembly Members were willing to vote for billions of dollars of cuts to education-the most important program to average Californians-but are afraid to cut wasteful prison spending by even a fraction of that.

Interestingly enough, Noreen Evans, the Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, wrote an impassioned piece arguing in favor of the Senate’s prison package.  As part of the Assembly leadership, she’s likely to fall in line today.  But she recognizes that the political considerations driving this debate are pretty outrageous.  It’s hard to argue with Dan Walters’ assessment that this episode shows how nobody in the legislature, on either side of the aisle, has earned much of a right to object to the howls and disapprobation from throughout the state.  The Senate could lead the way, at least on this issue, and force the Assembly wobblers, terrified of their own voters, to knuckle under.

Stay tuned.

Those of you who were out in Pittsburgh may have attended our panel, “California – How Process Creates Crisis.”  If you couldn’t make it, I’m pleased that video from the panel is now available online for all to see.  Great thanks to Raven Brooks and the gang at Netroots Nation for making that happen.  Check it out if you have a spare hour or so.  For a larger version, visit the Netroots Nation site.

Leave it to Pete Stark (CA-13) to tell it exactly like it is.

Moderate Blue Dog Democrats ”just want to cause trouble,” said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

”They’re for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they’re just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process,” Stark told reporters on a conference call.

Most of the legislative process involves posturing.  The Blue Dogs want something for their districts, liberals want to represent their constituents, et cetera.  When someone like Stark cuts through the posturing and lays out its consequences, it’s quite revealing.  He’s one of the few people who can say this.  He also in the same interview called co-ops the equivalent of a “medical unicorn”.

Given the major hits that the Healthy Families program took in the last budget revision, it’s sort of good news that the program is trying to find ways to keep almost half a million kids from being dropped from the insurance rolls.  How did they manage to do that?

California legislators have apparently reached a bipartisan solution to prevent more than half a million children from being cut from the Healthy Families public health insurance program.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to send the proposal to the full Senate. All but two Republicans on the committee – one was absent – voted with Democrats to move it to the floor. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also supports the measure, said spokeswoman Rachel Cameron.

The state board that manages the programs had planned to begin sending disenrollment notices next week to the first wave of children set to lose coverage but decided Thursday to delay the move for a month.

The bill, which surfaced this week, would raise money for Healthy Families by having participating families share more of the costs of coverage and extending a gross premiums tax on companies that manage Medi-Cal insurance plans.

What’s this now?  A tax?  On corporations?  Well, the tax already exists.  It was due to end October 1, but this measure would extend the tax, and also LOWER it, from 5% down to 2%.  The California Association of Health Plans (the state insurance lobby) supports the bill, and if my business’ taxation were going down while I got credit for saving children’s health care (a far higher sum of money to keep Healthy Families alive comes from the First Five Commission, not this lowered tax).  Also, dental insurers got an exemption from this tax because Dave Cox wanted it.  So anyone who thinks this vote, requiring 2/3 in both houses, will be smooth sailing, industry opposition or not, is dreaming.

As stated in the article, the bill would increase premiums and co-pays for participating families, who opt into the Healthy Families program because they cannot currently afford coverage.  The Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB) set out cost-saving measures that would force higher costs on low-income Californians.

MRMIB also adopted four emergency regulations to trim program spending, three of which increase families’ out-of-pocket costs for Healthy Families services. Beginning November 1, families will pay higher copays for non-preventive health, dental, and vision services; prescription drugs; and emergency room visits that do not result in hospitalization. For example, families will pay $15 for using the emergency room, up from the current $5. A fourth emergency regulation requires families to enroll in the lowest-cost dental plans for their first two years on the program, at which point families could shift to a higher-cost plan. These four changes will generate net savings of $12 million in 2009-10, according to MRMIB estimates. MRMIB did not take action on a staff proposal to increase families’ premiums for savings of $5.5 million in 2009-10, because the increases are included in a bill currently moving through the Legislature (AB 1422, Bass).

I’m pleased action is being taken so that low-income kids in this state can have health insurance coverage; in the long run, we save money by allowing them consistent and preventive care instead of paying for it collectively through ER visits.  But poor families may not be able to use the coverage they get through Healthy Families if the premiums go too high.  And really, we’re talking about $100 million dollars to cover kids when the state shoveled $1.5 billion annually to the largest corporations in America, none of whom are thinking of abandoning 38 million potential customers in the nation’s largest state.  It comes down to priorities.

P.S. The Legislature took action on some other health-related bills this week.  Some decent bills may get to the Governor’s desk, but others were killed.  Cynthia Craft of Health Access has a roundup.

Can’t really argue with the message, however:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this afternoon said Assembly lawmakers “don’t have the guts” to make the cuts to the state prison system, criticizing them as politically motivated for stalling on a plan that would reduce the number of inmates in state lockups to save money.

“They don’t have the guts to go in there and to make the prison reform that they have been talking about for two decades, which we need to reduce the amount of inmates in there,” Schwarzenegger said in a webcast interview with the co-founders of Twitter at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

“The Assembly legislators, for them it was easier to go and make the $10-billion cut in education, but it is impossible for them to make the $1-billion cut” for prisons, he said.

I’ve been plenty vocal about the cowardice of lawmakers who actually voted for a sentencing commission two years ago, but who cannot do it now because of how it might affect them in their next election.  But Arnold Schwarzenegger making this statement is RICH.

Has he ever signed a bill that the Chamber of Commerce told him not to?

Has he ever dealt with the prison crisis, which has gone on throughout his entire tenure, up until this point?

Has he bothered to lift a finger while the state truly tumbled into the nether regions, with its safety net destroyed, its economy in tatters and its outlook bleak, at best?

Has he ever even had a sleepless night while all of this happened, instead of laying back with a stogie?

Maybe those who want to see a smart prison policy should get someone who isn’t as cowardly as the Assembly to make the message that the Assembly is cowardly.

Trying to appease the cowards running for higher office in the Assembly rank and file, Karen Bass has dropped the sentencing commission out of the prison reform package.

The sentencing commission was among the most controversial provisions of the Senate prison plan. But on Monday, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said “a real sentencing commission, with teeth, is my top priority” for corrections legislation.

Steinberg spokeswoman Alicia Dlugosh said Monday that the Senate leader would like to see any legislation passed by the Assembly “realize the same dollar figure in savings as the Senate bill.”

The bill passed last week by the Senate, AB 14 XXX would save the state an estimated $600 million, according to an analysis of the bill. But the Assembly seemed poised to make key changes that would reduce those savings by about $220 million.

Among the other changes expected to be made by the Assembly would be the elimination of a provision that would change some crimes which can be either felonies or misdemeanors –known as “wobblers” – exclusively to misdemeanors. The Assembly bill expected to come up for a vote this week would leave the state’s wobbler law unchanged.

Assembly Democrats also balked at a provision in the Senate bill that would allow some sick and elderly inmates to finish their sentences under house arrest.

Bass said she hoped to pass the sentencing commission as stand-alone legislation later in the year.  First of all, the year ends on September 11, and second, adding the commission to a must-pass reform package was the whole point.  If lawmakers objected to it as part of a package, they’re not going to turn around and support it in isolation.

Punting on this issue will ensure that federal judges will be mandating reductions of the prison population 10 years down the road.  The only reform worth doing in the package now clarifies parole policy, devoting resources to those who need to be monitored instead of the blanket supervision that has turned our parole system into a revolving door.  But that will not be enough to turn around the prison crisis for the long-term, without finally doing something about our ever expanding sentencing law.

This also shows the complete dysfunction of the leadership.  Darrell Steinberg may not go along with the limited version, and I don’t blame him.  His chamber has now stuck their neck out three times on tough votes – Tranquillon Ridge drilling, HUTA raids and now this – that the Assembly has quashed.  I wasn’t unhappy about the first two, but if I was in the Senate, I’d be pissed about all these controversial votes I was needlessly taking.  You’d think Karen Bass would have a sense of her caucus and know that she couldn’t pass whatever she and Steinberg and the Governor hammered out in private.  Because she’s on her way out the door in 2010 she has no leverage over the caucus, because everyone’s termed out and running for something else they have no fealty to the Assembly, and because they all live perpetually in fear they won’t take a vote they know would help future generations deal with a crisis.

As I’ve said, a broken process will almost always produce a broken result.  But individual lawmakers need to be called out.  Particularly the three Assemblymembers running for Attorney General who think they’re showing off their toughness.  When all of them lose, they’ll probably attribute it to other factors.  They should be reminded of this day.

The California Chamber of Commerce and 33 other business groups have basically stuck a knife in the Parsky Commission with a coalition letter opposing most of the tax reforms proposed.  I’m sure they’d still love to see a flat income tax and the elimination of corporate taxes, but since they have basically refused all revenue-raisers in this document, that won’t happen.

The coalition doesn’t like removing Proposition 13’s property tax limits from business property and a proposed new “carbon tax,” both of which have been promoted by the tax commission’s liberal bloc. But it also is warning about the potentially negative effects of a “net business receipts tax,” similar to a European-style value-added tax, that commission chairman Gerald Parsky champions […]

“The California business community has consistently stated that the solution to California’s revenue problems will only come from robust economic growth and job creation,” said today’s letter to Parsky. “We believe the proposed split roll property tax and the energy tax would be extremely detrimental to California’s economy. As for the business net receipts tax, we believe it is risky and inappropriate to move forward with dramatic changes to the tax structure without first fully vetting their impact on California jobs and the economy.”

The only way for the Parsky Commission to get an up-or-down vote for its recommendations is by making the package revenue-neutral.  The CalChamber document opposes all of the tax hikes while saying nothing about the reductions.  California Democrats can be squishy, but not squishy enough to eliminate corporate taxes in exchange for nothing.  Sen. Steinberg never agreed to bring the commission recommendations to a vote in the first place.  And without an offset, they will never see the light of day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce.  Even in the unlikely even that the legislature ignores this letter and passes some plan including split-roll or a carbon tax or a business net receipts tax, there’s no way the Governor signs it.  The Parsky Commission is dead.

And I’m not really shedding a tear for it.  Forcing a revenue-neutral standard on how to fix the tax structure inevitably was going to shift the tax burden from the rich, who have the clout to shield themselves from the predations of lawmakers, to the middle and lower classes, who don’t.  The very structure was flawed, and the reforms sought of a lesser order than being able to properly fund government according to the wishes of the majority.

So we can move on to the next challenge.  Calbuzz has a good scene-setter on that, referring to something that Jean Ross mentioned in our Netroots Nation panel last week.  California Forward’s reform package may include, as a condition of repealing the 2/3 rule for passing a budget (and only the budget), a raising of the threshold to 2/3 for mitigation fees on businesses, which may extend to fees on alcohol, oil production and “anything else that carries a nexus to a public problem.”  In other words, while the budget would require a majority vote, revenue (which is 1/2 of a budget) would be subject to an even higher standard than it is now, and the legislature would be constrained in their ability to respond to the impact of corporate actions that harm the public good.  Actually it could go even further than that:

But Chairman Bob (Hertzberg) insists it would be a mistake to focus only on Sinclair as the key to business support for CF reforms. The only way some of the conservatives and business people on CF would “even consider” allowing 50% to pass the budget is if there’s a whole panoply of budget reforms – pay-as-you-go provisions, controls on one-time expenditures, two-year budgeting,  performance reviews, sunset provisions AND limits on what can pass with 50% as a “fee,” he said.

But will liberals – on CF and in the Legislature – agree to circumscribe their current authority to impost fees with a majority vote? Will they agree that there has to be a “clear nexus” between charges allocated to a polluter or manufacturer of polluty stuff?

As Jean Ross puts it, ever so succinctly, “California Forward?”  I concur.

So while we appear to have sidestepped the Parsky Commission (for now), California Backward’s set of “reforms” still lurk in the distance.