(I’ve been meaning to promote this for a couple of days. Confirmations don’t always get the level of attention they should. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Low-income telephone customers won a brief reprieve last month, after the California Public Utilities Commission temporarily shelved a dangerous plan to gut the Universal Lifeline program.  But the battle is far from over.  While the AT&T backed plan is being “re-written” at the CPUC, the measure’s sponsor – Commissioner Rachelle Chong – is up for a confirmation vote by the State Senate to a full six-year term.  Yesterday, a diverse coalition of advocates went to Sacramento to lobby against Chong’s re-appointment.  Two residential hotel tenants from the Central City SRO Collaborative who were selected by their peers to go joined senior advocates, consumer groups, Latino leaders and faith based groups – to express strong opposition to a Commissioner who has disregarded the CPUC’s mandate to protect consumers.  After a grueling day at the State Capitol, we met with four of the five members of the Senate Rules Committee – and all four of San Francisco’s delegation in the legislature.  “I’m impressed,” said State Senator Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), after we told him who else we had met with that day.  “I can’t even get a meeting with four of my colleagues in one day.”

The California Public Utilities Commission is one of the most powerful bodies in the state, with a budget as large as the state General Fund.  The five CPUC Commissioners are supposed to look out for consumers and regulate utility industries, but too often fall under the influence of PG&E and AT&T.  Appointed by the Governor to a six-year term, the only “check” on the CPUC’s power is a confirmation vote by the State Senate – but rejections almost never happen.  But we were going to try to stop Commissioner Chong.

Universal Lifeline is a program mandated by the state legislature – but regulated by the CPUC – which provides a “no-frills” telephone line at an affordable rate of $6.11/month – allowing poor people to keep in touch with doctor’s appointments, job interviews and loved ones.  But Commissioner Chong’s proposal replaced the flat rate with 55% of the highest market price (when AT&T has jacked up telephone rates.)  Only after hundreds of seniors and low-income tenants representing various organizations spoke out at multiple hearings did the CPUC suspend this proposal, but it will be back after Chong gets confirmed.

For Catalina Dean, who lives at the McAllister Hotel – where her income is $104/month under Care Not Cash – the idea of keeping Chong on the CPUC is absurd.  “What else is her job,” she asked, “if it’s not to look out for low-income people who need a phone?”

But other groups oppose Chong’s confirmation.  For the first time ever, the largest three consumer rights groups in California – TURN (The Utility Reform Network), UCAN (Utility Consumer Action Network) and the Greenlining Institute – are working together to oppose a CPUC nominee.  Hene Kelly of the California Alliance of Retired Americans (and San Francisco Senior Action Network) also joined us on the lobbying trip to oppose Chong, as did Minister L.B. Tatum of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches.

And Chong has alienated many ethnic-based groups who had once supported her on the CPUC to represent their community interests.  “When the Governor appointed Chong in 2005 [to complete Susan Kennedy’s unexpired term],” said Sam Kang of the Greenlining Institute, “a lot of us supported here confirmation.”  But leaders like Faith Bautista of the Mabuhay Alliance, and Viola Gonzales of the Latino Issues Forum were there to explain how Chong had not reached out to their communities.  “When I complained to Chong about diversity issues,” said Kang, “she said that it’s not her job to ‘enforce quotas.'”

Chong has also broken earlier promises, such as: (a) restoring consumer protections against deceptive AT&T marketing practices, (b) convening public hearings to solicit input for basic phone service and (c) protecting limited English proficient customers by requiring companies to provide contracts in the same language as marketing materials.

Our delegation met with the four state legislators who represent San Francisco – Senators Mark Leno and Leland Yee, and Assemblymembers Fiona Ma and Tom Ammiano – all of whom had submitted letters to the CPUC opposing Chong’s deregulation of Lifeline.  Although none of them are on the Senate Rules Committee, we dropped by to thank them for their support – and to ask them to help persuade their colleagues to oppose Chong.

We also met personally with four of the five members of the Senate Rules Committee – Democrats Darrell Steinberg (who is also President of the State Senate), Jenny Oropeza and Gil Cedillo, and Republican Bob Dutton.  We also met with the Chief of Staff of Republican Senator Sam Aanestad.  Before the State Senate gets to vote on Chong’s confirmation, it must first pass a hearing at the Senate Rules Committee – when our delegation will return to Sacramento, and speak out during public comment.

Chong’s confirmation was scheduled for next week’s Senate Rules Committee.  But the hearing has now been postponed – along with all of Governor Schwarzenegger’s appointments – due to State Senate President Darrell Steinberg’s strong disapproval of Arnold’s “blue-pencil” budget cuts that hurt the most vulnerable Californians.  Steinberg and other Democrats have filed a lawsuit against the Governor, alleging that these cuts are unconstitutional.  I thanked Steinberg for his leadership on Arnold’s budget cuts, and reminded him that Chong’s actions at the CPUC are hurting the very same people.

The other two Democrats on the Committee might vote “no” on confirming Chong.  Gil Cedillo has long been a champion for the poor (such as his controversial legislation to ban “patient dumping”), and we hope he will take a similar stand on CPUC appointees who are messing with Lifeline.  Jenny Oropeza has also been willing to take a stand on commissioners.  For example, she recently blocked the confirmation of a homophobic appointee to a public safety commission.  We hope she will also do the right thing here.

By being the point-person for deregulating Lifeline telephone service, Commissioner Rachelle Chong has jeopardized her tenure on the CPUC.  And for low-income people across California who are struggling in this economy, they’d be glad to see her go.

Paul Hogarth is the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron, San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily, where this piece was first published.

The short-term fights are starting to be VERY short-term.  Following up on an earlier item, Democrats in the legislature plan to hold a vote on prison reform as early as Thursday, that would clarify $1.2 billion dollars in cuts.  And they don’t need any Republican votes to do it.

Over objections from Republican lawmakers, the Legislature plans to take up a majority-vote prison package Thursday that is designed to reduce the state’s inmate population by 27,300 and is backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The overall package would save $1.2 billion in part by reducing certain property crimes to misdemeanors, placing low-level parolees on global positioning system monitoring and sending older, infirm prisoners to house arrest or medical facilities to serve the final 12 months of their sentences.

The initial plan included an independent sentencing commission that could report back on changes to the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the prison crisis.  I don’t see that mentioned in this article, or anywhere else.  Hopefully that remains part of the solution.  And like the rest, lawmakers can enact it on a majority-vote basis (which means that the solutions wouldn’t take effect for 90 days).  Darrell Steinberg reiterated his support today.

“I’m confident we’ll have the votes,” said Steinberg, who will caucus with Democrats tomorrow

Steinberg said the Senate would vote on the governor’s plan, but with slight modifications to clarify which elderly and infirm inmates could be eligible for alternative custody and release.

“The intent has never been to carte blanche release any inmates, elderly, infirm inmates,” he said. “It never has been, but there has been some concern expressed, so we want to make sure that there are very tight criteria that would even allow for the possibility of allowing elderly and infirm inmates to be released.”

I prefer the People’s Budget Fix, which would stop putting nonviolent drug offenders in overcrowded prisons, focus on reducing recidivism through rehabilitation and treatment, institute risk-based parole supervision rather than blanket supervision that inevitably raises the rates of recidivism (often on technical violations of parole), and address the most ineffective areas of the criminal justice system – the burdensome, brutal three strikes law, and the death penalty.  The People’s Budget Fix coalition held a rally today.  You can hear Leland Yee speaking about it here and here.

And I hope they keep fighting.  I hope we have a sane criminal justice policy caucus in the legislature as a counterweight to the tough on crime troglodytes.  But while the Democratic/Schwarzenegger package isn’t perfect, but it’s the first step in the right direction in 30 years.  Particularly if the sentencing commission is included in the package, it will be historic and very important.  We will finally end the long march of building more prisons and warehousing inmates without giving them the tools to actually rehabilitate themselves and become productive members of society, and toward a future where we spend less, create more productive citizens and actually make our state safer.

Yesterday, I asked who would step up and sue the Governor? Well today, CapAlert has a juicy little nugget in the issue of whether the line item vetoes were legal: Sen. Darrell Steinberg is planning on suing the Governor.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is expected to announce at 1 p.m. today that he is suing the governor over his line-item veto cuts to the budget revision package. Though the news is still (officially) unconfirmed, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spokesman Aaron McLear has already put out a response, saying the governor’s constitutional authority to veto appropriations is “unquestioned and will be upheld by the courts.”

For a lot of reasons, this makes sense. Beyond the painful cuts that these “blue pencil” marks made on the state, there is a question of checks and balances at issue here.  If the legislature simply accepts these cuts, they are basically accepting this as a precedent.  By challenging the vetoes, the Legislature puts their foot down and says that they believe these cuts were not valid under the Constitution.

The LA Times has more from Steinberg’s press conference today:

Steinberg said he will file the lawsuit as an individual in San Francisco County Superior Court early next week and will tap political funds to pay for the legal challenge.

“We elected a governor, not an emperor,” Steinberg said at a Capitol news conference. “In making these line-item vetoes the governor forced punishing cuts on children, the disabled and patients that he couldn’t win fairly at the bargaining table. And in doing so, he overstepped his constitutional authority.”

There’s been quite a bit of confusion about whether or not the Governor was able to make line-item cuts in this budget.  After all, it was a revision, not a budget agreement where spending appropriations are made.  In those cases the Governor can make cuts, but this was a revision consisting of a series of cuts and fund shifts, and it’s unclear whether the Governor can make additional cuts on top of cuts in a budget revision.

Craig Cornett, the Budget Director in the office of Darrell Steinberg, has sent out a letter to interested parties, which I’ve reproduced below.  Cornett reiterates the argument that the revision do not constitute appropriations, and should not be subject to the line-item veto.  This is particularly true with any appropriation reductions that passed with a simply majority vote, since a budget vote must have a 2/3 majority.  Cornett offers the remedy here, but he confines it to the courts.

Should the Controller implement these vetoes, we suspect that some party that will be injured by the vetoes will file a lawsuit.  Given the sweep of the reductions, this could come from any of a number of potential plaintiffs, such as children who will no longer have health insurance because of the reductions to Healthy Families Programs, battered women’s shelters that will be threatened with closure because of elimination of funding for the Domestic Violence Program, AIDS prevention and treatment programs that will no longer receive state support because of the elimination of Office of AIDS funding, or counties that will see cuts to their Child Welfare Services or Medi-Cal administration funding.

What Cornett leaves out of this analysis is the ability for the Legislature to override the Governor’s blue pencil edits.  Obviously that is off the menu, as far as we know.

I don’t think it would surprise anyone to see Schwarzenegger break the law to balance the budget – so many provisions in this budget violate the law that it can be seen as a stimulus package for the legal system.

When the Governor signed ABx4 1-the bill that revised the 2009-10 Budget Act-and accompanying trailer bills this morning, he line-item vetoed about $500 million in General Fund expenditures in order to ensure that the state has a reserve for 2009-10.

Budget staff from both the Senate and Assembly worked closely with Legislative Counsel in construction of ABx4 1 and, based on that work, and follow-up conversations, we think that these vetoes-especially those of health and human services programs-are outside the Governor’s Constitutional authority, for a couple of reasons.

First, reductions to amounts in the various budget schedules do not actually constitute appropriations and, thus, are not subject to line item veto.  This argument is bolstered by Counsel’s long-held view that, unlike new or increased items of appropriation, the Legislature may reduce General Fund items of appropriation with a simple majority vote, and any General Fund action that takes place with a simple majority vote is not, by definition, an appropriation, and therefore not subject to line-item veto.

Second, most of the budget revisions for the health and human services departments were not even included in the scheduled items, but instead were placed in Sections of 568 to 575 of ABx4 1.  These sections of the bill added new Control Sections 17.50 to 18.50 to the 2009-10 Budget Act that reduced the various appropriations for HHS departments in a descriptive manner, thus making it even clearer that they do not constitute appropriations.  These control sections include departments that were specifically included in the Governor’s line-item vetoes-Aging, Health Care Services, Public Health, MRMIB, Mental Health, Developmental Services, and Social Services.

Should the Controller implement these vetoes, we suspect that some party that will be injured by the vetoes will file a lawsuit.  Given the sweep of the reductions, this could come from any of a number of potential plaintiffs, such as children who will no longer have health insurance because of the reductions to Healthy Families Programs, battered women’s shelters that will be threatened with closure because of elimination of funding for the Domestic Violence Program, AIDS prevention and treatment programs that will no longer receive state support because of the elimination of Office of AIDS funding, or counties that will see cuts to their Child Welfare Services or Medi-Cal administration funding.

You may have heard this by now, but we have a deal.  The #cabudget hashtag should get you your fix.  The topline stats:

$15 billion in cuts, no new taxes, $11 billion in gimmicks and borrowing

$4-5 billion in local government raids

only an $800 million reserve (initially the talks were for a $4 billion one)

$6 billion in reductions to public schools, but an $11 billion dollar payment somewhere down the road though not in writing

yes, there’s new offshore drilling in this deal, going around the Lands Commission, and without an oil severance tax for the producers

$1 billion assumed for the sale of the State Compensation Insurance Fund, which is not only unlikely but would really crush small businesses if sold

no suspension of Prop. 98

basically a reinvention of state government, more austere, and precisely when folks need the opposite.

Story here.

…three furlough days a month for some state employees still in place for the rest of the year

$500 million in cuts to Cal Works

smiles all around from Dem leg. leaders as they cheer that “we did not eliminate the safety net for California.”  Poking a big hole in it, apparently, qualifies as A-OK.

…we’re also cutting $1.2 billion to corrections without releasing any prisoners, as per the actual politics as usual.  The only way you can do that is by cutting every treatment or rehabilitation program in the prisons, or eliminating overtime for corrections officers.  In other words, we’re turning prisons into Public Storage units.

UPDATE by Robert: The main takeaways here:

• Arnold and the Republicans got everything they wanted – a cuts-only budget that protects their wealthy allies and the big corporations from having to pay their share and that makes everyone else suffer.

• California’s government is functioning as intended – producing right-wing outcomes despite large Democratic majorities. I will continue to blame specific legislators for agreeing to this shit, but lasting change will only happen when we press the reset button on state government.

UPDATE by Dave: Just to state the obvious, only the Republican leaders have agreed to this.  We still aren’t through the process where individual Yacht Party members have to be bribed for their votes.

Of course, we aren’t through the process where progressives just say “no we’re not voting for that, try again,” but I’ve never seen that process come into play.

UPDATE by Robert: More elements of the deal, from John Myers at KQED CapNotes:

• Background checks for IHSS providers

• Fingerprinting of workers and clients (so if you are disabled and cared for at home, you will be treated like a common criminal merely because you need assistance)

• “Some state parks will close” even though parks generate more tax revenue than they cost

• OC Fairgrounds to be sold

• Integrated Waste Management Board to be abolished, despite the fact that its annual cost is statistically negligible

The February deal was bad, but this is far worse.

…CalPERS reports $56 billion loss. Local governments are going to have to make up part of this shortfall – but with what money? The legislature has guaranteed mass bankruptcies for local governments with their raid on local funding, which was probably the point of Arnold’s insistence on such raids.

While the all-cuts deal seems destined to pass in the near-future, leaders of every stripe are spinning. But, as Progressives, we should be watching what our own leaders have to say most intently. I don’t mean to pick

“The cuts to education have been devastating to my city and to other cities,” said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles. “Teachers have been laid off, class sizes have grown. What’s happened to education has been terrible. The reason it’s happened is because we’ve been in the worst recession since the Depression. We haven’t exactly sealed the deal yet, but it seems as though we are reaching conclusion on how to make sure the schools are repaid.” (SacBee 7/20/09, emphasis added)

Certainly the recession is a cause of the cuts to education. But THE reason? I think not.  Bass knows from trying that the cuts to education were not the only option.  Does anybody think that if we had a system of government that worked that we would be in this situation? If we had majority rule? If the Legislature had the authority to actually control spending priorities on the entirety of the budget? It is excruciatingly clear that our system is to blame for much of this mess.

And what if we didn’t have the crazy recall system that brought us Schwarzenegger? What would the world look like right now with a Governor Phil Angelides, Westly, or umm…Bustamante? Sans Arnold and all of his flip-flopping negotiation strategies, do we build a way out of this without the IOUs? Heck, if Blakeslee can do it, it should have happened.

But, Democratic leaders cannot escape blame on their end either. Even in this broken system, they must take a share of the responsibility on their own backs. They have now agreed to what Democrats, almost universally, consider shocking, an all-cuts budget revision. They have agreed to steal $4 Billion from the local governments. Yes, they saved Cal-WORKS, of a fashion, but no Democrat should be proud of what will happen this week.

Being a Legislator these days is really crappy job. You get a series of impossible decisions and any legislation outside the budget gets ridiculed.  There are some times when you just can’t win, no matter how you vote. But being able to look yourself in a mirror, and still call yourself progressive after voting for this deal? Well, that will be a very tough job indeed.

Hopes for a deal on the California budget faded last night as the Big Five could not agree over the big issue of whether and how to suspend Prop. 98, the mandate for education funding.

The education money discussion is not new; much of it dates back to the February budget negotiations, which resulted in a ballot measure asking voters to offer blessings upon a supplemental payment. Voters rejected that measure, Proposition 1B.

And as with most education financing debates, this one lands squarely back at the maze of formulas and calculations that embody the 21-year old funding guarantee enshrined into the state constitution by voters, Proposition 98.

In a nutshell, the current debate focuses on whether schools are owed money in the future to make up for some of the recent spending reductions, and whether that obligation (the so-called “maintenance factor”) should be codified in law as part of the current $26.3 billion deficit deal.

“The Prop 98 law is so confusing,” said Senate President pro Tem Darrell Streinberg to a throng of reporters outside the governor’s office, “that we want to make sure that there is clarity.”

My belief is that education leaders will win this money in the courts, no matter how long Arnold and the gang put it off.  The lawsuit has already been filed.  The Democratic leadership want to just deal with the $11 billion dollars in essentially stolen money from schools inside the budget agreement by promising the money in the out years, while the Republicans and Arnold don’t.

So if you wanted a 2010 campaign slogan, you have the source material.

It looks to me like Arnold is holding out simply so he can prove a point.  His effort to insert privatizing social services eligibility at the last minute is flawed enough that even the Yacht Party might have trouble stomaching it.  The proposed cuts in the deal are really intolerable but not what the Governor promised at the outset.  It’s unclear whether the Governor will get his anti-fraud provisions, also inserted late into the process.  And it’s completely unclear, given the deal likely to come out, why we had to wait two weeks for virtually the same deal.

Whatever budget deal ultimately is passed — and in this economy it’ll only be a temporary fix, at best — virtually the same agreement could have been reached weeks ago […]

Democrats produced a stop-gap plan supported by Assembly Republicans that would have staved off IOUs. They proposed $3.3 billion in cuts to education and other programs that would have kept the cash flowing, at least for a few weeks. It would give them time to negotiate more cuts. Schwarzenegger rejected the idea and persuaded Senate Republicans to follow.

That’s where the governor began bobbling the ball, although his coaches figured he was playing to his fan base, what’s left of it.

Issuing IOUs will cost the state roughly $26 million in interest for July, the state controller’s office estimates. The IOUs also prompted Wall Street bond rating agencies to lower California’s credit to near junk status. That potentially could cost the state $7.5 billion over 30 years, according to the treasurer’s office.

Schwarzenegger, aides say, calculated that Democrats wouldn’t negotiate seriously without facing a deadline, such as the latest: most banks refusing to accept IOUs. Negotiating piecemeal would get nowhere, the governor believed.

But he might have dodged IOUs completely. Guess it doesn’t rankle much that the state he has governed for nearly six years must now pay bills with scrip.

Schwarzenegger’s clumsy attempt at the Shock Doctrine, when the deal Democrats were willing to agree to was painful enough, was about as irresponsible as a chief executive could be.

…just one more thing on this that the LAT article makes clear.  Schwarzenegger AGREES that education should be paid the money borrowed from them in the out years.  But Democrats suspect that his fingers are crossed and they want it in writing.  That’s the argument now.

Arnold is fond of telling anybody with a microphone about how he wants a complete solution, none of this halfway stuff that would only help the situation. He wants a full solution now!

The problem is that even his ever-changing “plan” isn’t actually complete. Not only are there 0, count ’em 0, votes for the plan in the Legislature and there is no actual legislation, but the plan they have has big holes:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s budget package, which he has touted as a way to solve the state’s entire deficit, has a glitch that may jeopardize $10 billion in federal stimulus funds for California’s public schools, colleges and prisons. (SF Chronicle 7/9/09)

Basically, the stimulus tried to prevent the actions of 50 little Hoovers from counteracting the additional funding by cutting their own spending.  So, they have maintenance of efforts clauses.  Unfortunately, the Governor’s cuts slash into those requirements.

However, with some fiddling with the numbers, Arnold’s plan could adjust some of the way the dollars borrowed from the local governments are spent in order to meet some of these requirements.  If there is anything that our politicians are good at, it must be fiddling with accounting numbers. I think that particular skill is part of the freshman orientation for new legislators, and the governor’s people are basically PhDs in the subject.

But Sen. Steinberg points out the sheer lunacy of the Governor’s position: Get me a complete solution…never mind the fact that I don’t have one.

“It just shows that there’s rhetoric and reality,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. “He’s made these bold pronouncements that even he can’t deliver on in many cases, and this is a good example.” (SF Chronicle 7/9/09)

See, actually having a plan would be something Arnold is less familiar with: Real Leadership.

You can almost set your watch by it.  The state budget picture is a mess, Democrats ask for a balanced solution, Republicans hold their ground and say no, Democrats don’t have the vote so they let it go.  It happens practically every single year, and it’s happening again, according to CapAlert:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said separately Thursday that they are optimistic a budget deal can be struck within several days.

The tone of their comments marked a stark contrast to Capitol fighting over the last few weeks between Democrats and Republicans over bridging the state’s $26.3 billion budget gap.

Steinberg also said Democrats had given up any attempt to increase taxes on tobacco or establish an oil severance tax […]

The Senate president said that Democrats no longer are pushing for a 9.9 percent tax on oil extraction or for hiking the state’s tobacco tax by $1.50 per pack.

“We would like to see an increase in the tobacco tax and the oil severance tax as a solution, but in this chapter that’s not realistic and it’s not what we’re holding out for,” Steinberg said.

It’s never going to be realistic in ANY CHAPTER.  Republicans know exactly how to play this game.  Their votes are needed for tax increases, so if they hang together they cannot lose.  The Democrats haven’t figured out how to shame the Yacht Party or make them pay for their votes, giving them no reason to do anything but hijack the process.  You’ll notice that as a result of this horrific experiment in governance, California is operating worse than practically every other state in the union.  

We’ve seen this kind of “it’s almost over” trial balloon on many occasions, so I wouldn’t put on the party hats just yet.  But somehow at the end of this process, somebody will step up to a microphone and claim how reaching agreement is a sign of success.  No.  It’s a sign of failure.  A failure to responsibly manage the state’s finances, reflected by the worst economy in 70 years.  The only lesson that can be learned from this process is that it’s fundamentally broken.

P.S. You’ll be thrilled to know that Schwarzenegger still sleeps well at night.

Schwarzenegger and I then repaired to a tent that he had put up in a courtyard next to his office, which allows him to smoke cigars legally at work (no smoking is allowed inside the Capitol). The tent is about 15 square feet, carpeted with artificial turf and outfitted with stylish furniture, an iPod, a video-conferencing terminal, trays of almonds, a chess table, a refrigerator and a large photo of the governor. Schwarzenegger reclined deeply in his chair, lighted an eight-inch cigar and declared himself “perfectly fine,” despite the fiscal debacle and personal heartsickness all around him. “Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight,” he said. “I’m going to lay back with a stogie.”

This is the guy who dares to chide others for not doing their job.

Dave mentioned a bit of what Sen. Steinberg said last night, but I thought this was worth while video.

In the end, we learn a few things. First, that Arnold was negotiating in bad faith.  He refused to budge, and then piled on additional grand policy changes.

But, Steinberg starts out with 2/3. It’s worth transcribing…even if I miss a few things.

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.

At one point, you can really see the emotion in his voice. Check out the video, it’s worth a few minutes.