As Becks mentioned in an eloquent diary on the Rec list, Karen Bass has made a baffling, counter-productive move to punish Sandre Swanson, Warren Furutani, and Tony Mendoza, lawmakers who did the right thing for their districts and their state by opposing the spending cap part of the budget.  The LA Times has a good story on this.

Like a military commander busting down insubordinate troops, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) has stripped committee chairmanships from a trio of wayward lawmakers after they refused to join fellow Democrats in support of a key budget provision.

The three assemblymen — Sandre Swanson of Alameda, Warren Furutani of Gardena and Tony Mendoza of Artesia — voted last month against a measure to cap state spending, which will appear on a special statewide ballot this spring […]

By removing the three lawmakers from their posts, Bass takes away key staff assistance, clout on policy issues and potential fundraising power.

She’s hurting those lawmakers, but as the above sentence makes clear, she’s hurting their constituents as well.  All because they couldn’t go along with a plan that will make it impossible to deliver basic services to Californians, even in good economic times.  And the spokeswoman for Bass trying to sidestep the rationale for this is pathetic.

“Having now had a couple months to see this class in action,” the speaker felt changes were needed “to ensure the Assembly can continue to do the best job for the people of California,” said spokeswoman Shannon Murphy.

She declined to elaborate, calling the changes “an internal caucus matter.”

You’ll notice that Darrell Steinberg did not mete out this punishment to, for example, Loni Hancock, who voted against the spending cap in the Senate.

I understand the desire for leadership to have control of their caucus, but unless we’re concluding that Karen Bass really really wanted to cap state spending, there is no good reason to enforce party discipline on a terrible vote.  When the spending cap goes down because of the arrogant way that Bass and the legislature hid the true costs, both on the spending side and on the taxation side, these three members who were right all along will appear to be the only ones who suffer.

I think it’s worth writing or calling the Speaker and asking her why she wants to punish progressives for voting to protect services for Californians.  And you might ask her, politely, to reinstate the Spending Cap Three.

District Address

5750 Wilshire Boulevard

Suite 565

Los Angeles, CA 90036

Phone: (323) 937-4747

Fax: (323) 937-3466

Capitol Address

P.O. Box 942849

Room 219

Sacramento, CA 94249-0047

Phone: (916) 319-2047

Cross-posted at Living in the O.

I was deeply upset last night when I heard that Assembly Speaker Karen Bass had stripped Oakland’s Assemblymember, Sandre Swanson, of his committee chairmainship. Swanson wasn’t alone in receiving this punishment:

Three Assembly Democrats who broke with their caucus by voting against a state spending cap and other budget trailer bills have been stripped of committee chairmanships. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers who supported the party majority have gotten promotions.

Those losing out are Assembly members Sandré Swanson of Alameda, Tony Mendoza of Artesia and Warren Furutani of Gardena. All three voted against a key budget compromise to put a state spending cap before voters. Now, following a flurry of new assignments by Bass, all three are former chairs of Assembly committees.

Now of course Bass is keeping quiet about this, refusing to say whether these members were stripped of their positions because of their votes on the spending cap, but it’s clear that this is the reason why she did it. I happen to agree with Swanson’s position on this vote and have great respect for him, since he voted this way even though he knew he would likely be punished by party leadership. But regardless of opinions on which way he should have voted, this is just messed up and it happens all too often in the legislature, on both sides of the aisle.

The intended effect of actions like this is to put party members into place, to remind them that they are only as powerful as they are because party leadership allows them to be, and that if they cross the party, they will be punished. This has a stifling effect on speech and forces legislators to respond first to party leadership, instead of representing their constituents.

Beyond that, it makes a mess of the legislative process. Swanson charied the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. The committee staff will now leave his office (or, more likely, they’ll stay in the physical office and Sandre and his staff will move to a smaller space), and will have a new Assemblymember as their boss.

And what of the bills that were headed for hearings at the Labor Committee? I know that if this had happened last year, I would have entirely freaked out. The organization I work for was working on passing a bill through the legislature that would have protected medical marijuana patients’ right to work (we did end up passing it, but Schwarzenegger vetoed it). We had been working with committee staff and focusing our efforts on committee chairs, including Swanson. This move would have entirely pulled the rug out from under our efforts and we basically would have been back to square one.

Which reminds me… I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Swanson’s time as Labor Committee Chair, but I do have one strong memory of him from the committee meeting I attended on our bill, AB 2279:

A representative from the National Federation of Independent Business voiced his concerns about the bill. He stated that testing for impairment on the job would be difficult and employees could still come to work impaired. He argued that if a medical marijuana patient was impaired and caused an accident, the employer would be held liable and would have to provide worker’s compensation…

Swanson then took his turn to grill the opponents. He asked the rep from the National Federation of Independent Business whether he had any statistics or examples of accidents medical marijuana patients had caused. Our opponents could not even come up with one example.

I’m glad to have had the opportunity to see my Assemblymember in action that day, but am sad to know that one vote can cost a generally party-loyal member such an important position.

Why? Because it is about to be empty.  Just at the time when we should be ensuring that people don’t get dumped on the street, we are looking at an unemployment fund that is reaching back for its last pennies. From the always informative Josh Richman’s Political Blotter a few days ago:

Assembly Labor and Employment Committee Chairman Sandré Swanson, D-Alameda, says lawmakers are going to have to work across the aisle to fix California’s unemployment insurance fund, which will be broke by January.

He apparently means lawmakers should be talking about raising the payroll tax that employers pay on each worker to bankroll the state unemployment fund. And for Legislative Republicans presumably still smug about preventing any tax increases in this year’s budget fiasco, that’s going to be a tall order.

*  *  *

Swanson cited a report showing the state unemployment fund will be $1.6 billion in the red by 2009’s end of 2009 and $3.5 billion short a year after that. But the situation might be even more dire: That report assumed a 6.4 percent unemployment rate and a 6.6 percent rate for 2009, but unemployment already had risen to 7.7 percent as of August.

As David Dayen pointed out a while back, our unemployment is getting to Rust Belt post-factory days. Yes, that bad. And now we can’t even count on unemployment insurance to be there.

And don’t you think that the Republicans will be lifting a finger to prevent this disaster.  Because to do so would require California to pull itself out of the race to the bottom on taxes. Again from Josh Richman:

California has the lowest taxable wage base allowed by federal law – $7,000, a figure that hasn’t changed since 1983 – but 42 states now tax more than the first $7,000 of employee earnings. In fact, federal law requires a base maximum tax rate of at least 5.4 percent for state unemployment insurance taxes; California is right at that federal minimum.

We have some the highest costs of living, yet our unemployment fund takes in money like we are in Mississippi, and then can’t do anything to help those who are laid off.  

There are two ways to fix this problem. One would be to drastically reduce the number of unemployed Californians between now and January.  But with all the bad economic news flying at us, not even the Republicans could say that’s a reasonable solution with a straight face.

And then there’s reality: increasing the taxes for unemployment insurance. You can do that by either increasing the cap to something reasonable ($7,000? really?) or by increasing the rate. I’d prefer we get cracking on the former, but a balanced solution would involve adjusting both.

Just Fix It!