Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, back in July:

The 2/3 requirement that we have in this state. I know it’s a tired old saw. But when you really think about, that is the cause of so much of the dysfunction in the legislature. you have a minority party that obviously worked in tandem with the governor that cost the state 6-7 billion dollars tonight for no good reason. To somehow improve your negotiating position. It is without question the most irresponsible act that I have seen in my 15 years of public service…I hope that the significance will truly capture enough attention that the people will decide it is time to change the system that allows the minority to essentially rule the day. That’s not just the Senate Republicans, it was the Governor too, who was apparently out to prove a point. And he proved a point.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, today:

State Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) released a statement expressing “grave doubts” about the choice. Maldonado needs the approval of the Democratic-dominated Legislature to take the post.

Steinberg cited the $2-million cost of the special election that would be required to fill Maldonado’s Senate seat, suggesting the money could be better spent scaling back recent fee hikes at state colleges and universities.

The Senate leader, under pressure to keep the post open for Democrats running for lieutenant governor themselves in next year’s election, also suggested he would like to see the job left vacant.

“It may be both fiscally and politically prudent to permit the people to make their own selection for this statewide office next year and avoid the expense of a costly special election,” his statement said.

Once again, we see that the State Senate is unwilling to actually do what it takes to overcome the 2/3rds rule that has crippled our state. Instead of seizing a golden opportunity to win one of the two seats we need to get a 2/3rds majority, Steinberg prefers to help coddle a fellow Democratic Senator’s unwillingness to face Maldonado in a general election.

Steinberg and other Senators are starting to put out the talking points to defend their weakness. But none of them hold water. The election to replace Maldonado here in SD-15 can be combined with the June primary, saving money. But even if it weren’t combined, the $2 million or so is statistically negligible when compared to the billions of dollars in cuts Steinberg is apparently willing to accept by refusing to take the chance to win a 2/3rds majority next year (along with the race to replace Jeff Denham in SD-12, a district with a D+12 registration advantage).

Additionally, voters themselves are going to have the chance to pick the next Lt. Gov., and confirming Maldonado will not change that fact, as Steinberg implies. If Steinberg believes Maldonado is a formidable candidate in the GOP primary or in the general election, he is badly misreading the political landscape.

Another argument we’re hearing is that Maldonado’s seat isn’t all that winnable:

Capitol Democrats said there was a more calculated political reason for not wanting to let Maldonado go. Democrats were humbled by this year’s election results in New Jersey and Virginia, and fear that 2010 could be a bad Democratic year. In addition, a low turn-out special election may make it tougher for a Democrat to win the 15th Senate District seat currently held by Maldonado.

Democrats have a slight 41-35 percent registration advantage in the district. Nearly 20 percent of the district’s voters are decline to state.  The district has been home to moderate Republicans like Bruce McPherson, and overwhelming voted for Schwarzenegger over Phil Angelides in 2006 – 61 percent – 34 percent. But in 2004, John Kerry narrowly carried the district over George W. Bush – 52 percent – 46 percent.

What the article doesn’t note is that Obama carried the seat by 20 points last year. And if it is turnout they’re concerned about, a candidate like John Laird will have no problem generating enthusiasm from progressives and Democrats across the state, who will gladly spend a late spring here on the Central Coast to put a good progressive in the State Senate.

More damning is the basic philosophy behind this “gee, winning the 15th is gonna be hard” nonsense. If Democrats are scared of winning a seat where they hold a 6 point registration advantage, a seat Obama won by 20 points, then they really have a serious problem providing the leadership this state needs.

Next year we’ll hear Democratic legislators exhorting us to help them in other Assembly and Senate races, saying that we have to help them win 2/3rds. But by refusing to actually go for 2/3rds when given the chance, they’re showing the California Democratic base that the Senate is fundamentally unserious about restoring majority rule.

The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Senate Democrats don’t actually care about the 2/3rds rule. That they prefer the status quo to having to actually take the opportunities they are given and take a winnable seat, or to set up a hated rival (Maldonado) to spectacularly fail when he can’t get elected Lt. Gov. next year.

UPDATE: The Courage Campaign, where I work as Public Policy Director, released this statement today on the Maldonado appointment:

“The best thing we can do right now is to remove Sen. Abel Maldonado from a position of importance where he can do great damage, the California State Senate, and place him in an irrelevant post, the Lt. Governor’s office,” said Rick Jacobs, Chair of the 700,000-member Courage Campaign. “For once, we agree with the Governor – Abel Maldonado should be demoted to Lt. Governor.”

The AP has a story about the fact that Arnold’s Prop 49 is breaking a hole in the budget.  Arnold, for his part, is pretty adamant that he won’t gut it. Because, you know, it’s part of his legacy. I guess it’s only okay to mess up Darrell Steinberg’s legacy by repealing the mental health measure.

The problem here is still one of framing.  Solutions now seem to be completely limited to cuts, those who support additional revenue appear to have completely lost:

With California facing another mammoth budget deficit, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst says voters should reconsider some of the billions of dollars tied up in ballot measures they have approved in recent years.

Among the suggestions from Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor is an after-school measure that costs $550 million a year and helped launch Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career. It is one of many programs contributing to the “autopilot spending” that the Republican governor and fiscal watchdogs often complain about because the plans were approved by voters without specific funding sources. (AP 11/20/09

The seriously messed up part of this: nobody can envision the world both Steinberg’s Prop 63, the millionaire’s tax for mental health, and Schwarzenegger’s Prop 49 could a) both live in harmony and b) have stable revenue sources.

Both mental health and after school programs are important, but so is K12 and higher education, so is IHSS, and so is infrastructure.  We must always balance one interest against another, but it has gotten to the point that we are starving our primary goals. We are cannibalizing programs that should exist to feed other programs that should exist.

We are only punishing ourselves. We must find new sources of revenue.

With the LG spot vacant now, and Arnold Schwarzenegger making a trip to the Middle East, including a stop to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is acting Governor.  So, I’d thought I would go ahead and list a few ideas that he might want to try on for size.  So, here we go:

1. Officially rename the Horseshoe the Hall of Muscles.
2. Appoint Tom Ammiano to be the next Lt. Governor.
3. Run T-3: Rise of the Machines on a continual loop in the window with the Latino Water Coalition.

Got any other ideas?

In the aftermath of the May 19 special election Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg claimed a mandate from voters to make cuts – and as he said, “cut we will.”

As we’ve seen, that hasn’t worked out so well for California. Our economy has worsened as government has contracted, leading to increased unemployment along with the financial and even physical distress that comes with reduced availability of health care services.

Perhaps Steinberg has learned from these mistakes, because in an article in today’s Sac Bee, he says “I’m done cutting”:

Steinberg said he’s not at all happy he had to cast votes for cuts – and he added, “I’m done cutting.”

“I feel very strongly,” he said, “that we’ve gone beyond what is reasonable when it comes to cuts.”

But he is, as [Marty] Omoto suggested, proud that he pushed for “surgical” cuts and that California government remains standing despite all the talk about the state being ungovernable.

California’s government is like a punch-drunk boxer. Sure, it’s standing, but not for much longer. The cuts Steinberg agreed to have weakened the state immensely, leaving us not only deeper in recession but making it unlikely we will see economic recovery anytime soon. Most employers and economists I’ve spoken to are convinced California will be among the last states in the country to recover from this recession.

That will exacerbate the looming budget crisis in 2011, when the combination of the expiration of the temporary tax increases approved in February and the borrowing gimmicks done in the last three budget deals come together to produce a budget deficit that could be as high as $20 billion – assuming the economy doesn’t get any worse between now and then.

I’m glad to see Steinberg realizes we can’t make any more cuts. It’s time to embrace sensible, populist revenue solutions and become aggressive – even fearless – about selling them to the people of California.

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s previous career had him as a man of action, who blew stuff up first and asked questions later. He didn’t frequently negotiate detantes, save for settling a dispute or two in Kindergarten Cop. It’s Not a Tumor!

So, perhaps that’s why he isn’t really that good at actually doing the job of being the Governor. On occasion it is important that you actually have the ability to talk the parties back off the ledge. But as the Governor is usually the one playing the brinksman’s games, you can understand that negotiation isn’t a skill he’s refined too well.

And apparently Arnold was once again not up to the task yesterday as the Big 5 Meeting blew up when Sen. Hollingsworth brought out his ransom note.

A private meeting of legislative leaders and Gov. Schwarzenegger ended abruptly Tuesday amid bad blood between Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and his GOP counterpart, Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta.

*** *** ***

Earlier, Hollingsworth said he would not put up votes for the bills until Democrats agreed to a list of demands that were laid out by Russell Lowery, Hollingsworth’s chief of staff, in an e-mail to senior Democratic staff on the morning of Sept. 11, the last day of the legislative session.

“Senator Hollingsworth and others were party to conversations where it was agreed that Ready Return and the homeowner’s tax credit issues would be completed before the end of session,” Lowery wrote in an e-mail to Steinberg’s senior staff on the morning of the final day of the legislative year. “It is my hope that we might get some movement early on these issues in order to avoid a train wreck on some important two-thirds legislation at the end of session.”  Lowery also mentioned pending legislation providing home buyers with a  tax credit.(CapWeekly 10/06/09)

Maybe he was just yelling at everybody to shut up, but he really should have learned his lesson on that particular method from the movies.

By the way, the words “Ready Return would be completed” doesn’t mean that this solid program would be permanently funded or otherwise enacted into law, nope, this meant that Ready Return would be killed so that Intuit could make a few more bucks off of poor people.  Intuit’s role is California politics in the last few years has quite frankly, been disgusting.  They have spread cash over politicians like Southern Pacific in the Hiram Johnson days, and held up the budget all to kill ReadyReturn, a program that would simplify tax returns for lower to middle class Californians with simple taxes. Of course, the hypocrisy of this coming from the Republicans, who claim to support tax simplification, would be funny had it not endangered the lives of many Californians.  But I guess campaign cash is a more important value to these Republicans.

And Hollingsworth claimed to have had some agreement with Steinberg that these issues would be handled, a deal that Steinberg said never happen. Some would call that illegal vote trading.  And, according to the article, apparently Speaker Bass suggested that his ransom note actually had nothing to do with the bills at issue.

Meanwhile, Arnold is still being Arnold, demanding a water deal by Friday or he’ll veto all the bills. The deadline for his veto is Sunday, or the bills will automatically become law.

This, my friends, is a dysfunctional government.

Just caught this press release by State Senator Lois Wolk, and my jaw dropped:

SACRAMENTO-Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) has withdrawn her authorship of Senate Bill 458 that would establish a Delta Conservancy.   The action came in response to being notified by Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) that her legislation would be amended in a Conference Committee with provisions Senator Wolk and the five Delta counties opposed.  Wolk has been replaced with Senators Steinberg and Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) as the authors of SB 458.

“When I learned that the Conference Committee intended to alter key provisions of the bill, as well as other pieces of the water package, it was clear I could no longer carry this legislation,” said Senator Wolk.  “What began as a sincere effort to create a state and local partnership to restore the Delta and sustain the Delta communities and economy is becoming, day by day, amendment by amendment, a tool to assist water exporters who are primarily responsible for the Delta’s decline.  It is regrettable.  Without the Delta communities as working partners in this effort it is unlikely to succeed.”

Neither Lois Wolk, nor Mariko Yamada, nor any other politician representing the Delta have been allowed into the committee, and it looks for all the world like they’re gearing up for a peripheral canal deal that screws the Delta so that the hydraulic status quo can be stretched along a little bit further into the future. A region and an ecosystem long marginalized in favor of powerful interests has just had the last line of political defense stripped away.

Forget it, Lois, it’s Sacramento.

originally at surf putah. h/t Davis Vanguard.

—

UPDATE – The Delta Counties Coalition now opposes the bill and wants it killed:

“To be perfectly clear, the Delta Counties Coalition opposes the Delta package, as currently drafted, and believes that the Legislature should not bring the package up for a vote today.  The number of changes required to make the package acceptable to Delta Counties is not possible in the time remaining.”

Despite the assumed end to the prison crisis, there’s still no bill to clarify the $1.2 billion dollars in savings assumed from cuts in the July budget.  The Assembly passed a bill that fell $200 million dollars short and had almost no prison reform in it (some parole reform, but no prison reform), and the Senate has yet to take that bill up.  After word yesterday that the Senate would do so, Darrell Steinberg backed away from it, seeking to give more time to the Assembly to add more reform and more cuts into the bill.  Because the bill only requires a majority vote, it takes effect 90 days after passage.  Which means that every day with no bill costs the state $3.3 million dollars.  This is the consequence of so-called fiscal conservatives in the Yacht Party, as well as their higher-office-seeking bretheren in the Assembly Democratic caucus, wanting to look tough on crime.  As the State Worker notes, this delay is taking a daily hit on the savings gained from furloughs:

Here’s one way that furloughed state workers could look at this: The CDCR budget impasse is whittling away at savings from furloughs. If you take that $3.3 million and multiply it by the 70 days from July 1 through today, you realize the state has burned through $231 million.

A single furlough day cuts about $61 million from the state’s payroll, although not all of that savings is in the general fund. (The rounded math: $2.2 billion divided by 36 furlough days in the fiscal year.) If you narrow it down to just salaries that the administration defines as being in the general fund, one furlough day equals about $35 million. (Double check our rounded numbers: $1.3 billion divided by the 36 furlough days.)

In other words, this budget-stalemate-in-miniature has squandered the equivalent of about four furlough days for everyone or nearly seven furlough days if you look only at general fund employees.

Other states have used smart on crime policies to reduce spending without any loss in public safety.  They are taking new looks at non-violent offenders, relaxing draconian sentencing policies, targeting parole resources to those who need supervision and concurrently lowering recidivism rates through rehabilitation.  Right now, California has the exact wrong set of policies on prisons.

In fact, California is nationally known “for having the most dysfunctional sentencing and parole system” in the country, according to Stanford University professor Joan Petersilia, a criminologist who has spent years working with state officials trying to implement reforms.

“We’re too harsh and too lenient. Simultaneously,” Petersilia said.

Our mix of tough laws and fixed terms doesn’t give prison officials the flexibility to push low-risk offenders toward rehabilitation and keep dangerous criminals behind bars.

But reform efforts haven’t gained public traction because we’re too busy trying to keep people behind bars — with Jessica’s Law, Megan’s Law, the three-strikes law — to take a hard look at whether locking up more people actually makes us safer.

“The public doesn’t understand how illogical the whole system has become,” Petersilia said. “We think that somehow we’ve created something that is able to call out the most dangerous people, send them to prison and keep them in for a very long time.

“And the public is willing to pay whatever it takes to get that type of crime policy.”

I disagree with the last sentence.  The public is willing to be frightened into initiatives that do nothing for public safety and just spend money needlessly, because they’ve seen no leadership on the other side for an alternative conception of how to protect the public sensibly and best manage our cirminal justice system.  Nobody has argued in public for a more intelligent system for so long, that the public willingness to believe in its possibility has atrophied.  We can keep the lock-em-up policies or we can look to a better future.  Either way, we’re blowing $3 million a day while some Assembly Democrats go on a desperate search for their spines.

The Assembly’s passage of a prison “reform” bill is not the end of the line for the legislation, as the Senate simply won’t accept it in this form.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the reaction in the Senate to the Assembly’s low calorie prison bill was muted. Senate Democrats certainly wouldn’t have come out and said the plan stinks. But there’s no official timetable on a reconciliation vote in the upper house, either.

The official response from Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg came in a written statement: “The Assembly took a good first step today but it’s not a complete package. In the coming weeks, I look forward to working with (Assembly) Speaker Karen Bass and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on further reforms that will strengthen our criminal justice system.”

The key phrase in that statement: “In the coming weeks.” This one’s not going to go away anytime soon.

The main reason is that the Assembly bill costs $233 million more to the overall budget than the Senate’s, and that money simply does not exist.  It’ll eventually come out of the hides of other programs if allowed to let stand.  And the Assembly Republicans and Democrats who help up the bill can then explain why it was necessary to keep terminally ill blind people in jail at the expense of children’s health care or some other social program.

Steinberg expanded on his dissent from the Assembly bill today, calling the legislature’s inability to pass the reforms based on cuts they already passed in July an example of the legislature’s “culture of failure”.  I’ve been saying that for weeks.

Meanwhile, I’m hearing a lot of reactionaries taking the example of Phillip Garrido, the kidnapper of Jaycee Lee Dugard, and the fact that he only served 10 1/2 years of a 50-year kidnapping sentence in the 1970s, to argue for more stringent parole and prison laws in California.  This is the typical Willie Horton-ing of any sane discourse on prison policy.  Garrido was convicted of a FEDERAL crime, not a state crime.    And that federal parole policy was abolished by 1987.  It bears no application to this debate whatsoever, particularly since, under this policy, violent criminals would not be subject to release and would face more stringent parole supervision, as resources would be allocated to those who require it.  The failure of parole officers to discover Garrido’s deviance demands EXACTLY the kind of parole reform in both the Assembly and Senate bill, so officers have smaller caseloads and can focus on the most dangerous cases instead of returning nonviolent offenders to prison for technical violations.

Meanwhile, the Governor, even while promoting a real reform plan, wants to get a stay from federal judges on implementing the required reduction of 44,000 to the prison population, which even the Senate bill doesn’t do.  He plans to file an appeal with the US Supreme Court as well, and if the three-judge panel doesn’t grant the stay, he’ll ask the Supremes to do so.

Sacramento politicians are still in between the “denial” and “bargaining” stage in reacting to their immoral and unconstitutional handling of the prison crisis.

(Sen. Steinberg managed to push the prison package through, but we’re waiting for some movement in the Assembly. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Four days after the passage of the historic prison reform package in the State Senate, it appears likely that the package must be amended if it has any chance of survival in the State Assembly.

Make no mistake about it – this is one of the toughest votes any lawmaker will have to make in his or her career. My boss, Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, talks a little about that to the right.

Everyone agrees that the current system is unsustainable. Prison costs have spiraled out of control because of inmate overcrowding and growing medical costs. In Chino alone – where inmates rioted two weeks ago – there are 6,000 prisoners in a facility designed to accommodate 3,000. And a federal judge is threatening to release over 40,000 prisoners if we don’t enact common sense corrections reform soon.

What’s more, the Legislature must make some adjustments to prison policy to implement the $1.2 billion in corrections cuts in the July revision. The reform package will result in savings of about $600 million; the other half can be implemented by the Governor on his own.

There really is no choice but to act. Last week 21 Democratic Senators did exactly that.

Edit by Brian: See the flip for more.

On the day before the vote last week, Senator Steinberg (disclosure: my boss) led the Senate Democratic caucus through a thorough discussion of the political ramifications of passing the prison reform package. Even with the clear potential that the package may stall in the Assembly, Democrats in the Senate decided that while there were valid policy arguments on both sides, the crisis in our corrections system called for genuine action. They took the brave vote. That ought to be recognized.

The bill passed out of the State Senate on Thursday with 21 out of 25 Democrats in support.

Members who voted “Yes” agreed that letting old, infirm and soon-to-be-released non-violent offenders out a year early represented no danger (with electronic monitoring) and saved California money. But those first year savings were a small down payment on the billions that will be saved with sentencing reform. See Senator Roderick Wright make a similar argument:

No one should underestimate the importance and the long-term benefit of a Sentencing Reform Commission, which will make sense out of the patchwork system that isn’t working very well and is costing billions unnecessarily.

In addition, the reform package includes parole reform that will make our streets safer and focus more attention in our prisons on incarcerating dangerous criminals. In the current system, there’s only one parole agent for every 70 parolees. The bill passed by the Senate will lower that number to 45 parolees for every agent, allowing agents a way to better monitor and help those who under the current system would be likely to re-offend.

Where the reform package goes from here depends on the political situation in the Assembly. Speaker Bass has been a shrewd fighter for reforming California’s corrections system in her five years in the Assembly – including being the author of a bill to establish a sentencing commission this year.

She faces a tough road in her house, but perhaps the Senate’s bold action will ultimately ensure that California gets a final product that brings fiscal responsibility to our prison system while keeping our communities safe.