Jerry Brown is about to hit Day 100, and it is clear the honeymoon is over.  Specifically, deals with six unions are set to be the focus of a showdown between the Governor and the Republican minority.  Needing a supermajority (yes, really) to even cut a deal that reduces benefits, Brown now finds himself looking at a fight over deals that are essentially the same deals as his Republican predecessor bargained with several other unions.

The deals negotiated by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown last month include union concessions, but they fall far short of the savings that lawmakers from both parties said that they wanted from the contracts. … But last week, a committee on which Walters is the vice chair heard the current measure and then split along party lines: Three Democrats in favor, two Republicans against, including Walters.

“I don’t believe there will be any Republican support for these contracts,” the Laguna Nigel senator said after the vote. “Not at this point.”(SacBee)

You can take a look at what the unions agreed to, but it’s definitely nothing approaching a pay raise.  They will pay more for their pensions and will take 12 unpaid furlough days a year.  While this is an improvement from the 36 (or so) per year, this ends the punitive 15% pay cuts while at least continuing the savings (and the services to the state).

All in all, these are contracts that help the state.  Yet, we can’t get them through for what reason exactly? Oh right, it’s where the Republicans have leverage.  After all, who is going to fight for policy when there are political battles to be won. Certainly not Sen. Walters.

I just got back from Texas the other day, after spending some time with my family.  And what do you know, I hear that LG Gavin Newsom and a crew of Republicans are heading down there to discover what is creating that awesome economy there that has got the state moving.

The problem with the whole “businesses are fleeing California” thing, is that is just one big myth fabricated out of nothing other than some political dreaming.  As Dave Johnson pointed out a few years ago, California jobs just aren’t fleeing.  And so it is appropriate that California’s leaders finally address this issue head on.

While a fair number of the people on this delegation were right-wing Republicans, Gavin Newsom is what you can fairly call a business friendly Democrat.  Not out to rid the world of all regulations, but certainly not somebody you can really attack for his embrace of those regulations. And frankly he’s not fond of Perry’s “hunting trips:”

“Candidly, the reason I came out here was out of frustration and admiration with some of the work that you’ve been doing,” Newsom said. “I’m sick and tired of Governor Perry coming to California all of the time.

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Leading state officials in California have recently begun to ferociously counterattack the notion of the ‘Texas Miracle,’ pointing out with a certain amount of schadenfreude just how bad Texas’ budget problems are. According to a budget analysis done by the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Politics blog Texas’ budget crisis is proportionally as bad as California’s.

California Treasurer Bill Lockyer told Los Angeles Times’ Evan Halper with evident satisfaction that “someone just turned the lights on in the bar, and the sexiest state doesn’t look so pretty anymore.” (SF Gate)

Let’s get one thing out of the way, in terms of the budget of each of the states, California is in no worse of a position than Texas.  Perhaps even better.  The relative numbers are about the same, but the difference is that Texas already has decimated their public systems.  The land grant colleges, principally the University of Texas, are pretty much relying on their (massive) endowment and get little support from the state.  Even if they are going to cut that $25B from their budget, which it looks like they will, it is really unclear how they do that in a way that doesn’t leave them in the hole for years to come.  How do you catch up when you have mortgaged your public education system?  Or do you just give up on those who can’t afford private schooling?

Texas isn’t the new California.  It’s just Texas.  They have their natural resources, which, wisely, were dedicated to the public universities generations ago, and we have ours.  Where we go in the next 6-12 months will go a long way in determing if we avoid going down the road that Texas is treading right now.

We are in a huge budget deficit crisis, no doubt.  So, in response, the Citizens Compensation Commission has made the bold step of saving, well, nothing, by eliminating the vehicle fleet purchased for legislators.

California lawmakers can say goodbye to their cars provided largely at taxpayer expense.

The California Citizens Compensation Commission voted today to give legislators a $300 monthly car allowance to drive their own vehicles, effective the first week in December. … The current program’s per-vehicle cost to taxpayers averaged $7,508 annually in the Senate and $7,397 annually in the Assembly during a one-year period that ended Nov. 30. The totals equal 42 cents and 38 cents per mile, respectively.

By contrast, legislators who drive their own vehicles are reimbursed by the Senate at 40 cents per mile and by the Assembly at 44 cents per mile.(SacBee)

Now, this isn’t really that big of a deal. It’s not like any of these legislators don’t already have their own vehicles and insurance.  It’s just a stupid symbolic move that doesn’t actually save the state any money. It’s hard to argue that legislators shouldn’t be driving around for state business, that’s kind of their job.  So, instead they’ll just drive their own cars.

No big deal I suppose, but it would sure be nice if we could actually focus on the big picture rather than playing around with feel-good do-nothing garbage.  Hey, I wonder how much the Citizens’ Compensation Committee is costing us?

It’s no secret that not everybody in the Democratic institutional organizational front has been totally on board with Gov. Brown’s plan on the budget.  But until this point, dissent has been quiet and not out in the media.  The President of the California Teachers Association changed that recently:

“I believe that as much as our governor has been extremely transparent and honest in doing what he told folks he’d do – which is let the people decide – it’s too late for that,” Sanchez said in a phone interview. “Once you put it on the ballot after June, it’s no longer an extension, it becomes new taxes. And once they’re new taxes, the people won’t support that. I think the Legislature ought to do that themselves.”(SacBee)

Now, Sanchez makes some good points here.  He is correct on the ballot prospects. Most of the polling that I’ve seen shows a very difficult passage for a measure that is merely a resumption of the former taxes rather than just an extension of the Arnold Schwarzenegger increases.  It could probably be done, but it would take a fair bit of money to make it happen.

On the other hand, passing the taxes in the Legislatures is “merely” a matter of getting two Republican votes in each house.  That would be something approaching a Herculean task in the current climate.  It would mean finding legislators who were unwilling to even put it on the ballot who would want to actually pass the taxes.  Perhaps it happens as the all-cuts budget becomes the nightmare that it will eventually become, but the odds seem long, perhaps longer than passing a tax measure on the ballot.

Sure, Brown would have to ditch his campaign promise, but those things happen.  Regrettable perhaps, but political realities make for difficult choices.

But, perhaps this is a more reasoned play (and not really all that troubling to the Brown administration) than you might initially suspect.  This is a far better bargaining position than what Brown started off with of only getting Republican votes for a ballot measure. Why not demand more from them?

Going back to the ballot, whether through the initiative process or the Legislature, really isn’t looking all that attractive.  And that’s the reality that CTA and others are looking at.  Eventually, sometime this spring, some consensus will have to form on a plan to move forward, but that just needs a bit more hashing.