Category Archives: Budget

Budget

Republican Greed Sinks Budget Deal…for now

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Fat cats smoking cigars while the masses suffer, demanding more for themselves and their cronies. Sounds like propaganda from the 1890s, right?

Nope. It’s the California Senate Republican Caucus in 2007. The tentative budget deal didn’t happen last night as planned, and once again it’s the Senate Republicans and their limitless greed that was the stumbling block.

The basic story, as culled together from the SF Chronicle, the SacBee and FDR at the California Progress Report, is this:

The “Big 5” thought they had a deal agreed yesterday afternoon. But once again, Dick Ackerman failed to sell it to his caucus. The Bee reports that the major sticking point now was Republican demands that suburban school districts get equalization payments now, not in 2008-09 as scheduled. Still, the deal appears close, and more negotiations are planned for today.

My thoughts over the flip.

As the Democrats waited for the Senate Republicans to respond, and attend a scheduled Senate session, several of the GOP Senators decided to enjoy themselves instead. From the Chronicle article linked above:

While members of the state Assembly waited patiently for an evening session to begin, a number of GOP senators – including Sam Aanestad of Grass Valley, Dave Cogdill of Fresno and Jeffrey Denham of Merced – were ensconced at one of the city’s fine restaurants across the street from the Capitol, enjoying cigars and fine wine.

I’m sure Denham’s constituents in Merced and Salinas will be pleased to hear this – especially when they learn that their own services are going to be cut, and payments for medical care and school delayed, so that suburbanites can get another handout. The SacBee explains the school funding issue (linked above):

In Monday’s developments, Senate Republicans took issue with the timing of when suburban school districts with historically low property taxes would receive about $130 million in “equalization” money to bring their funding in line with districts of a similar size and profile.

The current budget approved by the Assembly proposes to give those districts the extra money in the 2008-09 budget after annual growth is paid out to all school districts. But Republicans want equalization in the current budget.

Kevin Gordon, a consultant on education budget issues, said education advocates fear that Republican demands for equalization could jeopardize a 4.5 percent cost-of-living increase for school districts that advocates fought to protect in the current proposed budget.

What this means is that some suburban districts are able to keep their property taxes artificially low only because of state subsidies. The Republicans want to continue this by robbing the teachers of a promised 4.5% COLA. If there’s a clearer example of reverse Robin Hood out there, I’ve not seen it.

This entire budget hostage crisis has been provoked by Republicans simply so that they can enrich their cronies at the expense of working Californians. Whether it’s robbing public transportation funds to pay for tax cuts, and thereby forcing Californians to be shackled to their cars and the oil companies, or stealing needed money to keep teachers afloat so that wealthy suburbanites can keep their artificially low taxes, the California Senate Republicans are now out in the open with their demands that state government be used to channel wealth upward.

One hopes that the Democrats will not only continue to stand firm against this, but will start to educate voters as to what the Republicans in this state are really all about – stealing.

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August 20, 2007 Blog Roundup

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Budget

Budget Deal At Expense of CEQA Near?

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FDR at the California Progress Report reports that a budget deal seems near, and it may come at the expense of CEQA – or it may not. Depends on who you talk to, I guess:

[Villines] said that he had worked all weekend and that “all” had agreed that some fix needed to be made with respect to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the state’s basic environmental law, which he called an “AB 32 fix”.

And Núñez:

I specifically asked Nunez about changes to AB 32 and CEQA and he said flat out that there would be no AB 32 changes and none were proposed in the outline he had seen. The changes that have been bandied about by the Republicans all along are not squarely within the language of AB 32 but have been to CEQA. The Speaker did indicate that he was about to brief his caucus and that any changes to environmental laws would not be made without checking with the environmental community. He was reluctant to discuss what had been agreed to privately.

I cannot imagine in what world giving in to the GOP demands on CEQA, in any form, would be anything other than a catastrophic disaster, validating the Senate Republicans’ unconscionable hostage tactics.

Now, there could be no cause for such concern, and one hopes that our Democratic leadership understands the bad precedent and effect such a compromise would have. If anyone in Sacramento thinks that by giving the GOP any of what they want, they’ll ensure anything other than an even worse fight next year, they’re nuts.

[UPDATE] The SacBee has details on this “AB 32 fix” which involves protecting transportation bond-funded projects from AB 32/CEQA action. Details over the filp.

To soothe GOP concerns, staff has drafted a compromise proposal that would place a moratorium on greenhouse gas-related actions against transportation bonds, approved by voters under Proposition 1B last fall. It would sunset after the state Air Resources Board adopts new regulations to comply with a state initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020.

We still don’t know if this is the specific key that will allow a budget deal that Dick Ackerman says now exists.

Personally I’m deeply skeptical of such a deal – how the hell are we going to cut greenhouse gases if we exempt freeway construction from it? Assuming that public transportation, from light rail to high speed rail to clean buses, are still facing a $1.3 billion cut, this is a massive step backward for California.

Yes, it depends on a fight at CARB – but as we’ve seen, from Arnold’s manipulations of that body to the new CARB chair’s significant oil company stock holdings, that’s not a place where we can be certain of strong action of auto emissions.

Budget

For Price Gouging Lenders, Budget Crisis=Budget Opportunity!

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Price gouging in a time of crisis is depressingly normal, and it’s no different in California.

By the time a state budget is passed, Janet Rios will be at least $4,000 poorer. That’s the 19% in interest Rios says she must pay on loans to keep her two nursing homes afloat until lawmakers can agree on a spending plan.

Rios would seem to be a welcome client for any bank. The state pays her to take care of the elderly, and once the budget impasse is broken she’ll get a bundle of money that has been delayed. She just needed emergency funds in the meantime to pay the Stockton homes’ bills.

The state offered to guarantee the money in a letter she could take to her bank, Wells Fargo. But “they said that is not an acceptable thing to base a loan on,” she said, and classified her as a high risk, with an interest rate to match on two $100,000 lines of credit.

The state won’t reimburse her for the interest.

That sounds like ready-made legislation that would make a difference and a point, IMO.  Good people who run nursing homes or childcare centers or health clinics are being taken to the cleaners by a bunch of opportunists, at a time when the credibility of the lending industry is at a low ebb.  Indeed, the credit crunch that has roiled global financial markets is all the more reason not to penalize those forced into finding financing through no reasons of their own.  And the Republicans in the Senate are enabling this theft.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget

Maybe this really is the time to Dump 2/3

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As the budget crisis continues, over what is likely tangential issues (non-budgetary environmental laws are thought to be the culprit), many people have suggested we dump the 2/3 requirement. Notably John Diaz of the SF Chronicle,  Asm. Mark Leno , and Speaker Fabian Nunez have both come out in favor of eliminating the 2/3 requirement in the budget process.  But, those are people that you’d expect to say that kind of thing. You’d expect them to prefer a majority rule process.

But in George Skelton’s latest column, the Governator suggests that he might be interested in supporting a majority rule system. 

“Yes, we have had this mess, as you know, for decades,” Schwarzenegger replied. “I think that everyone now has come to the conclusion — all the leaders — that we must work, as soon as the budget is over, on a system that allows us to have a budget on time.

“If that means we should go and shoot for, as some suggested, a simple majority to pass the budget rather than a two-thirds vote, maybe that’s the solution.” (LA Times 8/20/2007)

Flip it…

Of course, if he actually supported such an amendment, one would expect all out-war between Schwarzenegger and the rank-and-file GOP. As it stands, the budget process is all that keeps the GOP from complete irrelevance in this state. They would fight such a proposal tooth and nail. And, oh yeah, they have a great tag line, “Democrats will raise your taxes.” It may or may not be true, but veracity was never a make-or-break thing with the Republicans.  It’s harder to air the rebuttal, that if we continue this F’d up process everybody loses.  That’s harder to get through to typical voter, who, by the way, is 72% white in this majority minority state.

So, perhaps we needed the budget debacle, and perhaps the extended delay will help. But, if that is to be the case, maybe we should be pushing to get this on the ballot as soon as possible to keep the obstruction from the “Gang of 14” fresh in the voters’ minds.

Skelton also lays out the reason why we need to eliminate the 2/3 rule all-together, not just in the budget, but also in taxation:

That typical thinking assumes the two-thirds vote requirement for a tax hike also would be scrubbed. It should be. Lawmakers illogically are allowed to cut taxes with a majority vote but need two-thirds to raise them. The state can go bankrupt just as fast lowering taxes as it can increasing spending, and proved that during the Davis days. (LA Times 8/20/2007)

It’s certainly time to repeal the anti-democracy provisions of the 2/3 requirements, but we all know that. But how to get from here to there is a tough question. But perhaps this Governator could be useful for something after all.

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August 19, 2007 Blog Roundup

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August 17, 2007 Blog Roundup

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Budget

Jeff Denham: Proudly Protecting California From Himself

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I wasn’t able to get to a vomitorium that was open early until just now, so I’m finally able to post about this ad Jeff Denham’s putting out:

He’s fighting to protect teachers, you see.  And kids!  He’s touting this amendment that would do nothing but prolong the budget battle.  He’s counting on the low-information voter with this one.  But in the Central Valley, they’re not buying it.  They would rather not see child care centers and services for the poor shut down to feed one man’s ego (and to stop any meaningful regulation on global warming issues, let’s not forget.  Here’s Assemblywoman Caballero:

Senate Republicans argue that the $3.4 billion reserve in the Assembly budget is not enough. Yet Republican senators voted for last year’s budget, with a reserve of $2.1 billion – 40 percent less than this year’s reserve. They argue that they don’t like CEQA, California’s premier environmental protection law. CEQA is not a budget issue and never has been.

The Assembly did its job; we compromised and passed a budget. The hold-up is in the Senate. Only one Republican – Senator Abel Maldonado, from Santa Maria – was willing to compromise. One more vote is needed, and the remaining Republican senators are refusing to provide it, even though the governor has asked for their support and made promises to make more cuts.

It’s time for all Californians to tell the 14 Senate Republicans, including our own Sen. Jeff Denham, to put personal ambition aside. Tell them we need to get Californians back to work. Tell them it is real people that are being hurt.

I think Denham’s losing the plot on this one.

As a side note, a big thanks to Health Net of California, which provided an interest-free loan in a time where there’s a real credit crunch to keep two rural county clinics in Tulare County open.  Would that the Republicans had such compassion.

UPDATE:  The response video!

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August 15, 2007 Blog Roundup

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August 14, 2007 Blog Roundup

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