California’s system of government is designed to produce bad outcomes, no question about it.  But that does not let Democratic lawmakers off the hook for their actions.  The process denies the ability to budget in a sane manner, but nobody put a gun to their head and forced them to sign on to a budget that rips the social safety net to shreds.  If progressive Democrats in the legislature were willing to say no a little more, they might gain a measure of respectability and have at least some of their demands met.

The problem is that it’s very difficult to get a bead on who votes for and against a budget, given the state’s process.  There were 26 different budget trailer bills, and lawmakers had the opportunity to pick and choose where to take stands.  Progressive activists need that information of who voted on what in order to make choices about their representatives.  It’s not the sum total of the equation – leadership can cut deals with individual lawmakers to vote no on trailer bills where their vote is not needed for passage and yes on others, and there’s all manner of horse-trading that goes on.  But in the end, all we have are the votes.  And so we can judge our elected officials based on what votes they made.

Marty Omoto has helpfully strung together all the votes on the main budget bill and key trailer bills, and he will follow this up in subsequent posts.  Have a look.  Hone in on your representative.  Did they vote in your interests?  Did they take any notable stands?  Or did they go along with the leadership?  If so, is there any need for them to participate in the Legislature, or couldn’t a lever pulled by the leadership work just as well?

I’m going to look at my two lawmakers, on the flip.  By the way, I also have a list of all Assembly votes on almost all the budget trailer bills, ping me if you want a copy.

For the time being, I live in the 41st Assembly District and the 23rd Senate District.  My lawmakers are Julia Brownley and Fran Pavley.  How’d they vote?

Brownley voted yes on every single budget bill except for four based on my records: AB X4 7, AB X4 8, AB X4 19 and AB X4 23.  AB 7 (for short) privatized the social services enrollment process.  AB 8 instituted so-called “anti-fraud” provisions to CalWorks to reduce or limit eligibility, and eliminated cost of living adjustments to the welfare program. AB 19 dealt with in-home support services (IHSS) in a similar way as CalWorks, adding fingerprinting and background checks and other anti-fraud measures.  AB23 was the Tranquillon Ridge offshore drilling deal.

So basically, Brownley objected to the policy changes made to human services programs but voted with the leadership on pretty much all the program cuts.

As for Pavley, she voted against AB 7 (privatizing social services enrollment), AB 8 (anti-fraud changes to CalWorks), AB X4 9 (cuts on spending to developmental services like Early Start), AB 19 (the aforementioned IHSS bill) and AB23 (Tranquillon Ridge).  She also voted against AB27, the use of redevelopment funds by the state.  Everything else was a yes.

I think if you go through the votes, with rare exceptions you will see this as the norm for Democratic legislators – picking a few issues, usually on issues where their votes were not needed, to draw a line in the sand, but being generally not too troublesome and following leadership.

In general I think Julia and Fran are solid legislators, but I think it’s reasonable to ask whether that’s good enough.

In the wake of the latest, but by no means the last, budget mess in California, I continue to believe that the only way to break the deeply negative cycle of fiscal dysfunction and budgetary gridlock is through a Constitutional convention that restores democracy and provides sensible, workable government in the state of California.  You’ll be interested to know that this belief actually transcends party lines.  Tom Karako directs the Golden State Center at the Claremont Institute, one of the nation’s most conservative think tanks.  And even he agrees that the state’s Constitution needs to change to better serve the public.  I haven’t previously seen a conception of what a conservative vision for a Constitutional convention would look like, and so I think it’s worth analyzing it to see their preferred options.  Karako first says:

If Californians do rewrite the Constitution, it should be revised to resemble more closely the concise federal Constitution: more responsible legislators and executives, stronger control of the bureaucracy and less direct democracy.

Then he comes up with several issues that appear nowhere in the federal Constitution.  Here are his six proposals:

1. Part-time Legislature

2. Hard spending cap

3. Two-year budgeting cycle

4. Eliminate the two-thirds supermajority requirement for budgets

5. Unified executive branch

6. Repeal ballot-box budgeting

The first four are either irrelevant to the federal Constitution or in direct conflict to federal Constitutional provisions.  But I will soldier on and take them in kind.

Karako clarifies that his vision of a “part-time legislature” would not be a citizen legislature, and would include the same salaries and responsibilities as today.  With all due respect, then, we already have this.  State legislative sessions, in theory, open in January and end on August 31, and there are numerous recesses in between those dates.  The only reason it seems lately like the legislature is always at work is because four extraordinary sessions have been called in the past year and a half to deal with the budget mess.  Our legislature works around six months out of the year in less extraordinary circumstances.  That sounds part-time to me.

This notion of a hard spending cap has been soundly rejected by the voters twice in the past four years.  It is certainly not a feature of the federal Constitution, and it does not take into account emergency spending needs, the outpacing of inflation over wages in areas like health care, and multiple other provisions.  States with spending caps have seen their quality of life suffer and their state rankings plummet (see TABOR in Colorado).  This would in my view be disastrous, and obviously it’s the major bone of contention between liberals and conservatives.

A two-year budget cycle actually sounds prudent to me.  I would supplement it with an advisory long-term budgeting benchmark that would bring the concept of long-term planning back into state government, but anything that looks beyond the horizon could improve the quality of state budgets.

Conservatives have begun to relent on the 2/3 rule for passing a state budget, while keeping in the requirement for taxes, for somewhat selfish reasons.  I agree that the current system eliminates accountability for both sides of the aisle, and letting the majority rule on these issues would allow the people to decide the results of that course of action.  But Karako doesn’t take this to the logical conclusion, that a budget is composed of taxes and spending, and that only with a full repeal of both of these 2/3 provisions would we have representative democracy in this state.  He wants to hold one party responsible for budgeting while tying their hands on how to go about instituting that budget.

After citing positively how other states have part-time legislatures, and negatively how only two other states require a 2/3 vote to pass a budget, Karako calls for a “unified executive branch” without mentioning that practically no other state has its Governor appoint all additional Constitutional officers.  Some states have Governors appoint certain various members, but not the entire slate.  This and the next idea show a typical conservative contempt for the will of the people.  Democracy, even direct democracy, is not the problem with California.  (This “unified executive branch” is also a cover for vesting greater authority in the executive to engage in, as Karako says, “firing and controlling non-elected bureaucrats and public employee unions,” or union-busting, in the vernacular.)

And that leads us to Karako’s idea to repeal all ballot-box budgeting, where he does not specify between different types of ballot-box budgeting.  Those measures with funding sources provide no strain on the budget process because they do not impact the General Fund.  Unfunded mandates do represent a problem, and reformers have devised a solution, essentially “paygo” for ballot initiatives, requiring that they include a funding source before presenting them to voters.  Karako, instead, wants to repeal all voter-approved measures and place them under the General Fund.  I also believe in the indirect initiative, allowing the legislature a crack at either passing a ballot measure themselves in consultation with the proponents, or changing the language with amendments to better reflect current priorities.

On one thing I agree with Karako; “California needs constitutional reform before we can expect sustained fiscal reform.”  I don’t think his ideas hold to his belief in drawing on the wisdom of the US Constitution; however, I do see some common ground, on two-year budget cycles, on the need for democratic rule, on initiative reform.  My belief is that a Constitutional convention could bring together the entire rich diversity of the state to discuss, debate and decide on these issues, coming to a decision that will improve representative government in the state.  I’ll see Mr. Karako there.

UPDATE by Robert: For a progressive vision of a constitutional convention, the Courage Campaign’s Citizens Plan to Reform California (CPR for California) is a good place to start. I plan to write more about it this week.

So the Assembly is wrapping up their budget session, and it turns out that the Assembly came up $1.1 billion dollars short of the Senate’s solutions.  Oil drilling failed, and the local government raid on HUTA (gas taxes) failed as well.

So where does that leave us?  These bills will go to the governor, and since there isn’t concurrence, it will be roughly a $23 billion solution rather than $24 billion.  But, the Governor has a line-item veto.  He can make various cuts with his blue pencil.  But $1.1 billion?  Who knows.  That seems like a tall order.

Considering what Schwarzenegger did the last time a partial solution was handed to him, I guess there’s an outside shot that he’ll just say no and open a new extraordinary session.  But he’ll probably just line-item some, and maybe make up the difference by eating into what is now a $900 million dollar budget reserve.

Is everybody ready to be back here in October?

…We’ll have a couple days for final analyses, but let’s remember that this is a terrible budget and a dark day for California.

…Let me clarify.  The Governor can make line-item cuts but he doesn’t necessarily have to, because this is a budget revision.  He can also shift around the size of the reserve.  In the end, he doesn’t actually have to be in balance for a revision; that’s a Constitutional need at the beginning of the process, as I understand it, not now.  Clearly from the Governor’s remarks, he’s not going to veto the whole thing, so this is the “solution,” for now.  There also may be Constitutional problems with some of the stuff passed.

…Apparently, the Governor said, jubilantly, “We missed the iceberg”.  First, WE didn’t miss anything, YOU dumped the iceberg on poor people.  And second, if you really think you’re in the clear, um, don’t look behind you.

The Assembly has gone into a deep cocoon, only occasionally popping up to finish a vote that has been placed on hold.  The most recent one was SB12, which set cuts for general government.  That’s not necessarily in the land of controversial votes – the local government raids, the offshore drilling proposal and the return payment of Prop. 98 maintenance of effort funds in future years are the major stumbling blocks.  But SB12 couldn’t get the 54 votes needed for passage, stalling out at 51.  Now, it’s possible that this was just a delay tactic while negotiations and arm-twisting continue over the other issues.  But the longer this plays out, the more opportunity for a collapse.

The Senate is in adjournment.  They are gone until August.  They jammed the Assembly and now the Assembly has to find a way out of the mess.  If you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that this is over, well, I think we might have a long way to go.  Remember that the Assembly has one less person in it now than it did in February – Curren Price moved up to the Senate.  That means additional votes are needed, most likely from Republicans, for these measures.

I would be slightly surprised if these remaining measures didn’t pass.  But the going is very slow, and there’s still time to weigh in and whip your Assemblymembers, particularly on the contentious issues.

…both parties have gone into caucus.  What does newly independent Juan Arambula do at this point?

This is FAR from over.

…so the Assembly has come back into session.  Karen Bass says “we have been in session for 24 hours and we are ready to finish.”  We’ll see if the lawmakers agre…

…They just moved the HUTA taking (that’s the local gas tax bill) to the inactive file.  I think this means that the securitization of redevelopment funds must pass or there’s really no bill.

…They’re about to vote on Prop. 1A borrowing of local government funds.  There are technical problems so viewers at home can’t see the vote… OK, 57-12, measure passes.  Prop. 1A taking is complete.

…We’re up to AB14, the bill that accomplishes the suspension.  It’s a recapitulation of the 1A suspension…. and it runs aground, three votes shy of passage.  Local government safe for the moment, though things can change on a dime.

…one vote left for passage on this, remaining members getting lobbied furiously… Asm. Salas is the only holdout.

They put that one on call, and move to AB26, the redevelopment agency scheme.  This should be very interesting.  Still 5 bills away from full passage.

…I guess redevelopment only needed a majority vote, so they managed to get enough.  Measure passed 41-23.  I can’t believe they’re really going ahead with that scam.  The lobbyists in the City of Industry will party tonight!

…they lifted the call on SB12, the general government cuts, and there are 26 no votes, 1 too many, so they’ll have to flip somebody.

…if I hear “all those vote who desire to vote” one more time…

…Dave Jones caved, they got it through with another flip, 54-24.  General govt. cuts done.

…AB3 lifted, not sure what this one is about.  Came up a few votes short… AB3 is the education bill, with the Prop. 98 payback.  Still not getting through.

…they just got the Prop. 1A local government raid bill through, 54-25.

Trying again on Ab3… they got it through, 55-19.  It looks like education is done, too.  I think drilling may be all that’s left.

…AB23, the final bill, the offshore drilling bill, is on the floor now.  Chuck DeVore is grandstanding talking about it.

…Pedro Nava reminds lawmakers of the Jan. 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.  They need to know what they might be doing.

…Wes Chesbro, who represents one-third of the California coastline, urges a no vote.

…Bill Monning speaking against the bill.

…I’ll wrap up after we’re done, but ditching the HUTA gas tax raid blows about a $750M hole in the budget, and if drilling goes down, $100M more.  The Governor has a blue pencil, of course, so he can make the cuts needed by himself to compensate.

…Noreen Evans, a member of the leadership and chair of the Budget committee, is voting no.  I don’t know if this passes, it’ll be close.

…Curt Hagman (Yacht Party) pleads to “think outside the box” …

…Juan Arambula, ex-Democrat, expresses his support for the bill.  Says he enjoys the beaches!  And that surfboards are made out of petroleum, so we have to drill offshore (?????)

…Julia Brownley quotes President Richard Nixon on the 1969 SB oil spill.  Looks like a lot of people will get their say.

…Ted Gaines thinks we “won’t have to worry about foreign oil” if we approve this lease.  Because one platform can supply the oil for 38 million people.

…apparently, if other states have no income tax, they can have an oil severance tax, but if you have one, then you can’t have oil severance tax.  I didn’t know that construction.

… Mike Villines, former Assembly leader, is now up.  “I know we want green jobs, but I hope we are open to all jobs.”  Hurt me.

…vote coming up in a sec…

…28-43, drilling FAILS.  So about $850million short in the budget.  Will the Governor clean it up himself?

Maybe you’ve been following along, but if you haven’t, the Senate essentially passed all of their budget bills, albeit with difficulty, and adjourned a session that started last night around 7:30pm at 6:16 this morning.  The Assembly is still working through some of the final trailer bills, including the local government raids and the offshore drilling proposal at Tranquillon Ridge.  Here’s an incomplete roundup from the LA Times.

The worst elements of the bill were passed while everyone was asleep.  They must be very proud of their work.

And of course, this is a rolling, perpetual crisis.  Dan Walters is correct today when he says that the state now operates on 5-month budget cycles.

There have been some discussions about shifting to a two-year budget cycle to ease the one-year cycle’s tight – and usually unmet – timetable. In reality, though, the state has shifted to a five-month cycle, with the latest version of the budget, which was undergoing the dreary drill of adoption Thursday night, being the latest example […]

If the five-month cycle holds true, the deal’s deficiencies will be acknowledged in October, when the state must redeem the IOUs it’s sending to creditors. And then legislators will return to Sacramento to be entertained by lobbyists, plug the new holes and collect about $1,200 a week in tax-free per diem checks.

In January, the governor will propose a 2010-11 budget and the game will begin again.

It’s as much that the legislature cannot fathom the extremity of the real budget problems as that the cumulative effect of kicking the can becomes greater with every kick.  Of course, there’s a way out – you could reduce useless tax breaks to corporations and increase revenue.  But that’s deeply unserious and verboten.

If ever the need for a Constitutional convention to fix the broken system in Sacramento has become clear, it’s now, when 40 years of progress has been reversed in the dead of night.

I’m going to have to hit the sack now, I’m actually on NPR’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin in the morning (check your local listings), not talking about the California budget but about health care.  So I needs my beauty rest.

Feel free to chat and hopefully Robert can take you through.

UPDATE by Robert: I’ll be here for a bit longer. Assembly just approved AB 22, which includes the sale of the OC Fairgrounds.

…Capitol Weekly reports long delay in Senate is due to lack of votes for thieving local government funds. “Steinberg says both Dem and Reep caucuses are searching for votes.” We’ll see how that goes.

…to quickly update, the oil drilling provision barely passed the Senate, 21-18.  Sen. Steinberg says he has the votes to put through the local government raid and he’ll do so by 6:30AM.

…the Senate got the minimum required votes for the takings of local gov’t money, including the redevelopment agency securitization.  They managed to bang that through, with several Republican votes.  The Senate passed the entire budget and they’re done.  The Assembly is still working through it.  The Republicans are in a caucus.

I’m back.  So the general government trailer bill passed, after a bit of drama, 27-12.  They’ve gone into a caucus in the Senate.

The Assembly is in session as well, and they just passed something or other with the bare minimum 54 votes.  I’m not sure what it was, actually.  Just walked in.

…on the flip, I’m going to put a letter from the Indiana State Senate Minority Leader, Vi Simpson, that he sent to the California Legislature about the privatization of social services like Medi-Cal, Food Stamps and CalWORKs.  They tried a version of this in Indiana.  Take a look at what Sen. Simpson has to say about it.

…by the way, this measure passed the Senate, despite Sen. Simpson of Indiana’s best efforts.

The Assembly just passed some concurrent votes, basically passing what the Senate passed… the last one was cuts to health and human services.  Scott Lay shares my puzzlement:

Odd that Dems are voting for deep cuts that Reps don’t have to vote for

Because we don’t have a functioning leadership that would make Republicans pay the price for what they’re about to do to the state.

…The tougher votes are being shifted until the end, and paramount among them are the local government takings and the offshore drilling provisions.  I think the former, which will attract bipartisan No votes, might actually be in more danger than the latter.  The Governor was adamant that he would not sign a partial budget before.  If he doesn’t get that vote on local government takings, he’d have the choice to sign a partial budget.  What will he do?

…AB9XXXX (all those X’s because this is the fourth extraordinary session of this year) is on the floor, dealing with cuts to the developmentally disabled budget.  Jared Huffman and Jim Beall just told me how terrible this bill is but they’ll vote for it.  It passed 59-11.

…AB11 is up (Resources).  Actually, this one uses stimulus money in the budget year.  65-9.

…SB13, 54-14.  That one dealt with courts and the judiciary.  It’ll close the courts one day a month starting in August.

…The Assembly has moved into caucus (at least the Republicans).  All’s quiet for the moment.

…thought I’d share this picture up in a city government building:

The OC Register has a story up about the potential bankruptcies that could result from local government raids.

Asm. Tony Mendoza, one of the many lawmakers tweeting tonight, notes that Asm Reeps are having issue with AB 12/ SB 12.  John Myers informs that one would cut money for the Williamson Act, which is particularly popular in rural areas.  The Act “enables local governments to enter into contracts with private landowners for the purpose of restricting specific parcels of land to agricultural or related open space use. In return, landowners receive property tax assessments which are much lower than normal because they are based upon farming and open space uses as opposed to full market value.”  I can see why it’s popular to those who get the reduced taxes.

UPDATE by Robert: Tony Mendoza also made this point:

Some members who have a problem voting on this bdgt, are saying the same arguments I said in Feb., when I didn’t vote & lost my Cmt Chair

In other words, Mendoza voted against the February budget deal and was punished by Speaker Bass for doing so. Now other Assemblymembers are realizing Mendoza had been right all along. Could it be that Democratic legislators are finally waking up to the reality that the system is rigged against them? That they are doing the Republicans’ work for them, destroying California only to come back 5 months later to have to do it again?!

…Scott Lay notes the insanity of community college cuts:

ABX4 1 cuts community colleges by the largest amount ($ or %) in the system’s history, at a time of huge demand.

The school where I have taught several courses, Monterey Peninsula College, has seen soaring enrollment over the last 4 years. Demand for classes is enormous. People WANT to go to school. They WANT to learn new skills, new trades. And California is about to tell them “sorry, no, sucks to be you.” This is as good an example as any of the anti-stimulative effect of this budget as anything.

And that passes 54-21.

…Another health trailer bill passes 74-2.  Transportation bill up.  Sandre Swanson, Democrat, really is the only one to consistently vote no tonight.

…The transportation bill runs aground, stuck at 53 votes.  Interesting.

…They held off on that one, and moved to a bill that would increase state tax withholding by 10%, basically an interest-free loan from workers to the state.  Should be interesting to see if it gets Republican votes… it didn’t need Republican votes, majority-vote trailer bill, 45-31, passes.

…John Myers tweets that Steinberg and Bass are discussing something on the floor.  I think we’re about to see what will happen on the more controversial issues (local govt raids and drilling).

July 22, 2009

Dear California State Leader:

We have watched with interest as California considers option to reduce state costs, particularly

a proposal to centralize and contract out eligibility determination for state benefits including the

Medi-Cal, Food Stamps and CalWORKs programs.

I wanted to share with you from a first-hand perspective how dangerous such a policy can be for

your state’s long-term fiscal health and the welfare of California’s citizens. In 2007 the State of

Indiana signed a ten-year, $1.16 billion contract with IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer

Services Inc. (ACS) – the largest contract of its kind, both in terms of taxpayer dollars and length

of contract term. Just two years into this experiment, the cost savings expectations have been

dramatically lowered, the roll-out has been halted, error rates have increased, and our citizens

are not being properly served.  

First, cost savings are not materializing as promised. In November 2006 Indiana Governor Mitch

Daniels said that privatization would save the state $500 million over the 10 year life of the

contract. More recently in July 2009, an agency spokesman said they expect to reduce costs by

$300 million over the 10 years, but that the savings won’t begin to be realized until 2011.  

The modernization of eligibility determination for Medicaid, food stamps, and emergency

assistance has been implemented in 59 of Indiana’s 92 counties. Private call centers now

handle about one-third of the state’s 1.2 million-person caseload.

For those Indiana state legislators within the rolled out areas, the volume of complaints and

constituent requests for assistance related to the privatization have increased dramatically,

practically turning our legislative staff into caseworkers for our constituents. We anticipate that

this will only continue and most likely get worse if the remaining 33 counties are brought into the

modernized system.

As you know, the layers of state and federal statutes, regulations, and court decisions make

public benefit programs very complex. Outsourcing the intake process of these programs

undermines the value of experienced caseworks who help citizens navigate networks,

determine eligibility, and find the most effective combination of services. Indiana’s administration

released approximately 1,500 caseworkers from state employment in March 2007. This year the

Indiana General Assembly enacted a bill requiring the Division of Family Resources to maintain

offices in each county rather than consolidating the office operations into regions or districts with

the intention of ensuring that residents have state caseworkers to approach face-to-face with

questions or concerns regarding their benefits.

Finally, the increase in error rates and fault in timeliness have drawn sharp criticism from a

broad community of advocates, non-profit community organizations and private businesses who

serve our constituents and from the federal government.    

The food stamp program has drawn the most attention due to the oversight of this program by

the federal government, and the program data serves as an example of the overall impact. In a

June 23, 2008, letter the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service requested Indiana’s Family and

Social Services Administration (FSSA) to realize “measurable improvement” in food stamp

processing before the state proceeded with any additional roll-out. On the same day, FSSA

suspended the roll-out reportedly due to the need to divert attention to flooding response in the

state. The suspension remains in place today.

Statewide, Indiana failed to process 68% of food stamp applications within its own extended

goal of 60 days (the federal standard is 30 days) during the final quarter of 2008. The USDA

also reports a worsening negative error rate for food stamp delivery. A negative error rate of

12.18% was reached in FY2008 as 75,000 people out of 623,000 may have been improperly

denied food stamps. Further, Hoosier complaints received by the federal government about

problems receiving food stamps have increased dramatically from 5 in 2005 to 99 in 2008.

Our state has been left in a very difficult position.

Earlier this month, Indiana asked IBM Corp., as the contract lead, to submit a “corrective action

plan” to address more than 200 recommended changes to improve training, reduce turnover,

add 350 more employees and introduce more technology to speed up approval of applications

and reduce error rates.  

FSSA Secretary Anne Murphy has said that if IBM’s service record does not improve by

September, it’s possible the contract will be canceled. Ms. Murphy also recently said that her

agency doesn’t have a backup plan for running the system that provides benefits to 1.2 million

Indiana residents if the contract is cancelled.  

Where we now stand is with a dismantled system that underserves citizens and has cost the

state $315 million with no realized cost savings. All of this comes at a time when Hoosier

families face the highest unemployment rate in 26 years and the state is cutting every penny

available to deal with dramatically falling revenues.

I urge you and other state leaders to reject a proposal to privatize eligibility determination for

state benefits programs. The long-term costs to your state and to California’s citizens will

outweigh the promise of savings that may never be realized.

Sincerely,

Vi Simpson

Indiana State Senate Democrat Leader

District 40

The State Senate is in session right now.  You can watch at CalChannel, if you dare, or follow along with the live-tweeting at the #cabudget hashtag.

…Jeff Denham is completely grandstanding and trying to create a mailer for his Lt. Governor campaign.  He’s playing the Tough on Crime Wurlitzer by lashing out at the cut to the corrections budget.  Lying about the early release figures, too.  Chris Kelly must be getting a thrill up his leg.

UPDATES by Robert: Now Tom Harman, Republican of Huntington Beach, is parroting Denham’s claims on early release. This isn’t a budget debate, this is a GOP attack on Democrats.

…high drama on the first bill, AB 1, in the Senate. Although 4 Republicans voted Aye – Ashburn, Aanestad, Hollingsworth and Huff – 3 Dems have voted no, and they are Cedillo, Correa and Yee. DeSaulnier and Oropeza haven’t voted, and Maldonado could always flip his vote.

UPDATE by Dave: This is going to be a long night.  They couldn’t even get votes for the first provision, where the details of it haven’t even been determined?

…I’m out for a bit, so Robert will take you through the madness.

UPDATE by Robert: SoCal activists led by Marta Evry are asking folks to contact Oropeza’s office to ask her to vote no – (916) 651-4028.

…Abel Maldonado lays out the Zombie Death Cult strategy:

I’ve known dennis hollingsworth for 10 years and in every budget he would say “the longer we wait. The better it gets” what’s he think now

I’m guessing Maldonado and Zed aren’t exactly BFF.

…Oropeza shows up and votes Aye, and Strickland flips from No to Aye. One more yes vote and they’ll have passed the first of 31 budget bills. Gonna be a looooong night.

…Runner flips from No to Aye and the measure passes – but not before Mark DeSaulnier gets his No vote in. I’m pleased that DeSaulnier is voting no, but he needs to vote no from the outset and not sneak it in when it already has passed.

…Dave Cogdill is trying to push an amendment to end state funding of abortion. Dems are going to table this bullshit (and the amendment dies).

…health bill passes more easily, 29-11.

…AB 6, Medi-Cal cuts, pass 39-0.

…list of bills and their overall impact is here. Not all bills are available in full detail.

…after the drama on the first bill, the others are pretty much flying right by. The pattern is clear: All Dems vote yes, with usually just enough Repubs to get to the 2/3 level (27 votes). Republicans get their budget and then make Democrats vote for it. No Democrat has yet explained why the hell they are going along with this.

…right now they’re going after the low hanging fruit. The difficult bills – as @capitolweekly notes, the difficult ones are education, welfare, and local government – are being bypassed for now.

…AB 5, which passed 29-11, will cause about 775,000 children to lose their health care coverage. Senator Ducheny (Dem) said she hopes First 5 will come through with funds to save that program. In other words, the legislature is trying to enact Prop 1D even after voters rejected it on May 19.

…AB 22 will sell off some state property, including the OC Fairgrounds. Jeff Denham wants more property to be sold and hints Republicans will demand more sales the next time the legislature has to fix the budget (likely around November). All this is happening under a CEQA exemption agreed to in February, which is now gaining the status of precedent. Democrats are routinizing the giving away of the store. At least everyone voted for this – passed 39-0.

…Senate is on break for caucusing ahead of the tough votes. Assembly is passing the bills the Senate just passed.

Budget votes, originally scheduled in the Legislature for 2:00, have now been pushed back multiple times.  The lastest word we have is 7:00 or 8:00, according to Karen Bass.

One major hurdle seems to be the securitization of redevelopment agency funds, which would net about $7.4 billion dollars over the life of the borrowing.  Yesterday, Mark DeSaulnier described that provision to me as both “insane” and “illegal.”  Insane I expect, but illegal would mean that it could not be enacted tonight.  And we are now hearing from several sources that the redevelopment legality is throwing a wrench into the budget package.

Remember, this is something that City of Industry lobbyists have been seeking for years, primarily so they can fund an outdoor stadium and attract an NFL franchise.  The way that it’s been structured, according to reports, is that this borrowing maneuver, which would tie up about 10% of total property tax revenue for up to 30 years, would replace the seizure of local government funds through Prop. 1A and HUTA (the gas tax).  If the redevelopment securitization gets shot down, the borrowing would come from the above.

This was described to me last night by DeSaulnier as a shadow play, so Dennis Hollingsworth and his buddies can say they tried not to take from local governments.  But it’s completely unclear whether anyone would vote to take those funds through Prop. 1A and HUTA, which would blow enough of a hole to scuttle the deal.

…The State Senate is in session right now.  You can watch at CalChannel.

They’re voting to suspend the rules to allow votes to happen tonight.  It went through unanimously except for Wyland (R).

…The first bill of the series is the prison bill, which just allocates the reduction in funding. Denham has a poison pill amendment to actually set out the policy, which the Yacht Party kicked and screamed that the Democrats were trying to do.  The amendments got tabled.  What nonsense.

I’ll start a new thread.

Well, it’s going to be a late night.  The Legislature is set to convene at 2pm to consider the budget deal.  Here’s the Assembly floor report.  I could write another “25 Things” just off of this document, some of the bits buried in there are amazing.  Here’s just one example:

Eliminates automatic cost of living adjustments (COLA) for CalWORKs and SSI/SSP grants.  Also eliminates COLA’s for the budgets of UC, CSU, and other state departments.

Also, IHSS workers, who make $12 bucks an hour, may have to pay for their OWN criminal background checks and fingerprinting.  Just for bureaucratic-speak, I also like the absurdity of this: “Consolidates the Bureau of Electronic Appliance Repair and the Bureau of Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation into the Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair, Home Furnishings, and Thermal Insulation.”  Done!

This will not be an easy vote.  Democratic lawmakers in the rank and file are unlikely to rubber stamp this.  In addition to Sen. DeSaulnier, I’m hearing that many other lawmakers are uncomfortable on a variety of measures, to the extent that the Assembly Speaker is not whipping votes on the offshore drilling proposal or the dissolution of the Integrated Waste Management Board (which costs $0.00 for the state).  The City of Industry lobbyist-backed deal to securitize redevelopment project money and tangle 10% of property tax revenue for up to 30 years isn’t a done deal, either.

A provision of the budget agreement, which faces a vote in the Legislature as early as today, would extend the life of the state’s redevelopment areas, a proposal that Industry officials have pushed for more than two years. Critics say the move would be a gift of public funds to benefit the proposed stadium and other private development at the expense of cities and counties that need the money for healthcare, welfare and police services.

A similar measure backed by Industry died in the Legislature last year after complaints from local government officials. But late in the budget negotiations, the city and its allies helped revive the proposal.

“They were able to find a mechanism to provide the infrastructure for an NFL stadium, but they aren’t able to find the mechanism to fund nutrition for a hungry child,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said Wednesday. “It’s galling. It’s really galling.”

AFSCME is running ads against the whole budget deal, and most advocacy groups have been quite critical.  I would guess that most people in the Assembly have the perspective of indie Juan Arambula, that he’ll vote for most of the budget “with a heavy heart and a clothespin on my nose.”  But I think some provisions could easily get struck down today, so it’s worth letting lawmakers know what you think.