Deadlines involving getting measures on the state ballot (which may be necessary for finishing the budget) are leading to speculation about a budget deal in Sacramento.  Of course, I’ll believe it when I see it.  But here’s the latest:

Expectations are that there will be a temporary sales tax, some kind of spending cap perhaps like the one recommended by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, and that local governments will take a hit, possibly those permitted under Proposition 1A that allows local property taxes to be borrowed and requires repayment within two years.

Since at least some of these actions require a ballot item on the November ballot, the calendar requires action this week. This Saturday, August 16, is the drop dead date that Secretary of State Debra Bowen has written the legislature that ballot measures need to passed, even with a legislative passed exemption from deadlines that are in current law. The time is needed in order to print ballots and a supplemental pamphlet in time to get these to the voters.

Indeed, time is also running out on Prop 1, the high speed rail bond, and efforts to amend and strengthen it. There may be a deal which would place a separate measure, Prop 1A on the ballot that has these changes.

Dan Walters is hearing the same thing.  Sounds like a Sacramento compromise where the conservatives that dug in feel no pain for their intransigence, all the solutions are temporary, nothing structural is addressed, the GOP extracts a MAJOR concession in a spending cap, and local governments get robbed.  Considering that Schwarzenegger can blue-pencil out anything he wants after the fact, and the final deal may give him MORE authority to cut spending, giving up the Orwellian-titled “budget reform” without structural and not temporary revenue reform would be a mistake, especially if it bears a strong resemblance to the budget reform proposition that was soundly defeated by voters in 2005.  But we don’t have all the details yet.

I’m not seeing much of a strategy here to campaign on the budget, aside from a few outside groups.  The 2/3 requirement is the only way out of this vicious cycle.  We can talk about “more leadership” but really the answer is to make Republicans pay.  

UPDATE: And as if on cue, a new email from the CDP:

The ultimate budget solution

As California faces a massive structural budget problem this summer, the ultimate solution to our budget woes is within our grasp. We need to pick up more Democratic seats in the state legislature.

With Barack Obama at the top of the ticket and an energized and enthusiastic volunteer base, Democrats are poised to change the political map in California this year. We have an unprecedented opportunity to elect Democrats up and down the ballot everywhere in the state, even in traditionally Republican areas. Help make this happen.

They’re asking for low-dollar contributions.  If the high-dollar contributions didn’t go to members’ legal defense funds, it’d be a strong message.  What’s interesting here is that they specifically cite winnable seats:

Alyson Huber, Assembly District 10

Joan Buchanan, Assembly District 15

John Eisenhut, Assembly District 26

Marty Block, Assembly District 78

Manuel Perez, Assembly District 80

Hannah-Beth Jackson, Senate District 19

John Eisenhut, a farmer from Stanislaus County, is an interesting case.  What I like here is that the CDP is actually making some target decisions. (I hear AD-36 and AD-59 are interesting cases as well.  2/3 in the Assembly is reachable in a wave election)

UPDATE II: Perata sez they have a deal.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata said today that Democrats have negotiated key points of a compromise state budget with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and that he considers negotiations over.

“I think we’ve, frankly, gone about as far as we can go,” the Oakland Democrat said.

Perata said the compromise plan includes a major concession by Democrats – a spending cap to limit annual state expenditures.

Republicans have been insisting on a spending cap as part of any budget pact.

“The question continues to be, are there Republican votes for it?” Perata said of the compromise plan […]

“We’ve said to the governor, ‘What do you need in order to move forward?’ So we’ve negotiated on that point,” Perata said.

“I’ll guarantee you that there won’t be anybody in the house that’s going to be happy with the conclusion. But it is a compromise – new revenues and program cuts, and no borrowing.”

You’ll recall that this is EXACTLY what Perata said last year – that nobody will be happy with the conclusion.  Yet he pissed away the only opportunity for a decent conclusion by intervening in two State Senate races (SD-15 and SD-12) and virtually ensuring that Democrats won’t be able to reach 2/3 in the chamber.  Open shoe, insert gun onto foot.

The spending cap is a horrible idea.  Analysis to come.

Just a quick update on the latest on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s slashing of state worker salaries.  After John Chiang refused to carry out the executive order, today Arnold sued him.

Schwarzenegger’s Department of Personnel Administration filed a lawsuit against Chiang late Monday in Sacramento County Superior Court. The suit says the state Constitution and several sections of law prohibit the state from paying full wages without approval of a budget.

“Except where payments are self-executing under the California Constitution, the state has no authority to pay state employees their full salaries where it does not have an appropriation such as in this case, where there is no budget for fiscal year 2008-2009,” the lawsuit says.

Chiang, a Democrat, has balked at making the pay cuts, saying the state has enough money to cover its needs into October.

“The governor has created a solution to a problem that does not exist…,” Chiang said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed.

This has become less about fiscal responsibility during a budget crisis and more about an authoritarian demanding his way.  As for the original intention of the order, to force a compromise on the budget, that’s, er, not happening.

Schwarzenegger met Monday with the Legislature’s Democratic leaders to try to reach a budget compromise.

“We’re still talking. We haven’t thrown anything at each other,” Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, said after emerging from the governor’s office.

The story of the 2008 election is going to be the epic collapse of the Republican Party in traditional strongholds.  

The Republican Party, which overtook Valley Democrats in voter registration totals eight years ago, is losing ground for the first time in at least a decade.

After peaking just ahead of the 2004 presidential election, Republican registration numbers are down in Fresno, Tulare, Kings, Madera, Mariposa and Merced counties.

The GOP’s decline is most obvious in Fresno County, where the losses have turned into an avalanche, even as the party gears up its efforts to keep the White House in GOP hands by electing Arizona Sen. John McCain as president.

The most recent voter registration numbers show the Democrats are closing the gap and are now fewer than 9,000 voters behind the Republicans.

At the peak in 2004, GOP registrations were ahead by more than 23,500 voters.

This will obviously help in AD-30, where Fran Florez is facing Danny Gilmore to keep Nicole Parra’s seat in Democratic hands.  But this is a nationwide and statewide shift that is generational in nature.

In Riverside County, Republicans have lost close to 34,000 voters since October 2004; in Orange County, an 18 percentage point Republican Party lead in 2004 is now at 14 percentage points.

Bob Mulholland, campaign adviser to the California Democratic Party, points out that Democrats picked up almost 75% of the more than 411,000 new voter registrations statewide between voter-registration reports filed Jan. 22 and May 19.

During that same time, close to 21% of new registrations were decline-to-state. Republicans picked up just 3.6% of the new voters.

I think that in particular, failed conservative policies have most adversely impacted Republican areas.  The collapsing home market as a result of “inmates running the asylum” in the lending markets has hit the exurbs hard.  Job loss is most keenly affecting the areas where jobs are newer to arrive.  And of course high energy prices hurt those with long commutes.  The exurbs, the fast-growing counties, the greatest strength for Republicans in 2004, are massively turning to the Democrats.  That leaves Democrats with a noticeably bigger tent, and we have to recognize that as an issue moving forward, but for now, this cratering of Republican numbers is truly a sight, as stark a picture as it was right after Watergate in 1974.

I’ve been mulling this around in my head for a few days.  Three powerful members of the House Judiciary committee have have sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for an investigation into leaks surrounding the inquiry into State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata.

No article since November 2004 has explicitly said that any information came from a federal government source. But in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey obtained by The Times on Monday, U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr., Linda Sanchez and Zoe Lofgren wrote, “We are disturbed and concerned that news story after news story . . . has cited federal law enforcement sources as the basis of information.”

The only article specifically mentioned in the July 31 letter was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article cited “sources familiar with the probe,” a broad term that could encompass federal agents, defense attorneys and people who have been questioned […]

On Friday, the day after the congressional letter was sent, a Wall Street Journal article said the investigation into Perata “gained momentum over the past year.” The article’s details were attributed to anonymous people “close to the defense,” who said Perata’s longtime political consultant, Sandi Polka, was granted immunity to compel her to answer questions.

(Here’s that SF Chron article mentioned in the letter.)

The Perata investigation certainly has dragged on for years, leading to him needing more and more funds to raise in his defense.  In particular, the dumping of $250,000 from the California Democratic Party into his legal defense fund raised a lot of eyebrows around these parts.  After the initial explanation of “We’re the CDP and we can do what we want,” a secondary explanation was that the investigation had been politicized and that this was part of the DoJ’s efforts to prosecute and delegitimize Democrats.  A couple weeks later, out comes this letter, signed by two members of the California delegation.  But it’s Conyers’ participation that makes me believe that this is a real concern.  I trust Conyers enough to think that he wouldn’t simply badger the DoJ to help out a political problem in California.

Of course, let’s look at what the letter is actually alleging.  It’s not suggesting that the investigation itself is unnecessarily political, but that someone inside the investigation is using the media to disparage Perata.  That may well be true, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the whole investigation is a farce.

Let’s now look at what this does NOT suggest:

• It in no way excuses the CDP for paying off Perata with $250,000 in the middle of an election year, whether that money was simply laundered through them and earmarked for Perata or not.  Based on this SacBee report, it appears Perata is perfectly capable of raising money for himself:

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has solicited at least $200,000 this year from political interest groups for a nonprofit foundation that promotes and rallies support for one of his bills.

The arrangement, apparently legal, allows the Senate leader to solicit unlimited funds for his own political agenda without having to detail how the money is spent.

“He may have found a loophole in the Political Reform Act that needs to be closed,” said attorney Bob Stern, a co-author of the state’s Political Reform Act who now runs the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.

Which leads me to point 2:

• There is no way that Perata should still be Senate President Pro Tem at this point.  While he has done a good job of hammering Republicans for their intransigence on the budget, this image hit, as well as the constant distraction of having to find new ways to raise money for his legal bills, are not what we need at this sensitive time, ESPECIALLY when Darrell Steinberg is waiting in the wings and perfectly capable of performing the same duties without the black cloud of indictment hanging over the head of the Democratic leadership.  They haven’t even taken a caucus vote on this yet, to my knowledge – it’s currently scheduled for August 21, but during these budget negotiations that’s doubtful to come off.

It is perfectly consistent to be skeptical of the Justice Department’s case against Perata and to ALSO demand that he step down from his leadership position, and to excoriate the CDP for their conduct in either shoveling Perata money or acting as a conduit for that fund transfer.

For a variety of reasons, this is a depressing day.  In California terms, it’s because, for all the progress we think has been made over the last few cycles, the situation is very familiar – the big money special interests rule Sacramento, and the “lawmakers” do nothing but chase money.

Yesterday, the bill which would phase out plastic bags in California by placing a $0.25 fee for their use in shops which failed to recycle them stalled in the State Senate (must have been that Bag Tax blogad).  Cost was raised as a concern – it would have cost a whopping $1.5 million dollars (on a $100 billion dollar budget) to implement!

Also yesterday, the proposal to make California the very first state in the nation with guaranteed paid sick days for every worker, a right held in most industrialized nations, failed in the Senate, also due to cost (this would have been a robust $900,000 a year to implement!).  The bill was at the top of CalChamber’s annual “job killer” list. (I should also mention that a recent Field Poll showed it having 75% support among Californians, which of course doesn’t matter).

So bills that would have a major impact on health, the environment and quality of life are quietly yet consistently killed.  Meanwhile, the “lawmakers” shuttle from one fundraiser to the next, sucking up to the people who really control the Capitol.

In just four days next week, at least 40 politicians and candidates are scheduled to hold fundraisers, soliciting donations over cappuccino, carnitas and cocktails, at cafes, art galleries and restaurants. Most events are within a few blocks of the Capitol and require a minimum donation of $1,000 to attend.

Lobbyists — whose clients’ interests are on the line in the Legislature — face so many opportunities to give to legislators’ campaigns that some are plotting a schedule and mapping a route.

“You run from one to the other,” said Craig Brown, a lobbyist who represents several law enforcement unions.

The result of all these payments is a lobbyist class which is free to designate what bills would or would not be too “costly” to implement.  They’ll pay top dollar to the lawmakers to make sure they don’t spend a lot of money.  There’s quite a disconnect there.

It’s no wonder that “lawmakers” don’t care about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s vow to veto every bill until the budget is resolved.  The more bills have the potential of returning, the more money flows into candidate coffers from the lobbyists who want to stop the bills.  It’s a vicious, disgusting cycle which restricts progressive change at virtually every level.  Sure, they’ll let something like SB 840 slide through because they know Governor Backstop will veto it. But anything that might actually become a law – forget it.  Not unless the Big Money Boys wrinkle their noses in assent.

The big challenge for progressives and activists is to show a model that would break the cycle of lobbyist cash for access in Sacramento.  The low-dollar revolution has been nonexistent here, and without it you cannot credibly campaign in the state without help from special interests.  Until that time, we’ll continue to see consumer-friendly bills die in committee, lobbyists writing the laws, and the rest of us scratching our heads why we can’t make progress.

UPDATE: I should note that AB583, the California Clean Money and Fair Elections bill which would establish a public financing system for the Secretary of State race as a pilot program, passed the Senate Appropriations Committee on a party-line 9-6 vote and will now hit the full Senate floor.  Truly public financing is one of the only ways to break the vice grip that special interests in Sacramento hold on the government.

John Laird kicks a little Republican tail on the budget.  The backstory here is that the Reeps have been demanding a vote on the Democratic proposal despite their leadership offering other options in secret.  In addition, the Republicans have consistently opposed the budget without marking out what their alternative would be.  Here’s Laird:

“One of the great joys in serving in this body is when some of my colleagues take firm stands on both sides of an issue.

“We stood here on this floor just a couple of months ago and we wanted to take just an itty-bitty portion of windfall profits from the oil companies-where last week they reported $11 billion in profits-and use it to keep from laying off teachers. And speaker after speaker on this floor said, “Don’t waste our time with a drill. We’re against drills. Debates with foregone conclusions are of no value.” Now from the same quarter it’s “We demand a drill.”

“If I had gone 7 months into the budget process and not made a public proposal, not shared what my point of view for balancing the budget was with the people of California, I might want to change the subject as well.

“We have a situation where the voters of California have been taken hostage but we can’t get a ransom note.

“Because it’s been said on this floor today, people are having a tough time with gas prices. Well, if you are going to take their public transit away, they have to know. People have to have the courage to tell them.

“People are struggling with education. Well, if we’re going to take their retraining away at a time of economic downturn, we should tell them.

“People are having trouble making ends meet. Well, if their health care is going out the door, shouldn’t we tell them?

“Because the governor-it’s interesting people were making comments against the sale tax on the floor. Well, that is not in the conference report. That is the Governor’s proposal. And the reason the Governor has make the proposal is he originally said you can’t just do cuts. He says you have to have revenue. He had $7 billion of revenues in his proposed budget, and with $7 billion of revenue he still wanted to close 48 parks. He still wanted to cut health care by 10%. He still wanted to take the overwhelming majority [sic] from transit. He wanted to cut schools by $79 per student in California and what’s been demanded on the floor is that we have cuts that are higher than that because we won’t have revenue.

“Because if that’s the case, of course, there wouldn’t be a public budget. You have to level with the public. It’s time to have a budget in public. You can’t compromise with nothing.

“And we want to drive this down the middle. We want to get it done. We want the people to know what the issues are.”

They’re complete cowards.  They don’t want to explain their scheme to hurt struggling and vulnerable Californians and make them suffer.  So they play these games every year.  The 2/3 requirement must be demolished so we have a legislature that’s slightly more mature than the average elementary school playground.