Notes from yet another long session in the Legislature:

The Senate could wait no longer for the Assembly to get their act together, so they passed a reduced prison package along the Assembly’s lines, one that falls $200 million short of projections and does not have a sentencing commission.  The Governor has announced he’ll sign the bill.  It’s marginally worthwhile for the parole reforms, but really nowhere near what’s needed.  And so the federal judges will in all likelihood order a mass release, and because little is being done to address root causes, the cost of prisons and the population as a whole are both still likely to increase.  The cowards in the Assembly who think they have designs on higher office after this travesty should know that this vote will have importance, but not in the way they think.

The bill to waive CEQA requirements (California Environmental Quality Act) to put a football stadium in Southern California – without an NFL team, mind you – did not get by Darrell Steinberg, despite lots of energy and effort from special interests.  He’s giving the various parties more time to negotiate a settlement.  Sports stadiums are among the biggest corporate welfare projects we have in America.

The much-ballyhooed water deal has been scuttled, as Karen Bass announced she did not have the votes to move it.  The Speaker may ask for a special session on water, and the Governor would probably move that as well.  The middle-of-the-night rush obviously didn’t work, so some transparency would be preferable.

Still waiting on the renewable energy standard bill, which would put California in the vanguard of the nation in terms of its portfolio (33% by 2020).

A few end-of-the-session tidbits for you:

• CapAlert reports that Karen Bass will try again to get some of the more spineless members of her caucus to support a prison reform bill better than the scaled-back effort it already passed.  Bass talked about adding the “alternative custody” provisions into the bill, which would get it to the proper level of cuts, but not the sentencing commission, which still looks dead, sadly.

• One bill we know to be dead is SB88, which would have forced localities to get permission from the state before going into bankruptcy.  This was a union-backed bill to protect their local contracts, but city governments balked.  Sen. Mark DeSaulnier says he’ll try to broker a compromise for next year.  Those bankruptcies are probably right down the pike, so he’d better hurry.

• The bill that the Governor arrogantly vetoed earlier in the week, in a hissy fit because he wasn’t getting his way on water or prisons, was a bill to initiate a Vietnam Veteran’s memorial day.  It was authored by Republican Assemblyman Paul Cook, and he’s whipping support to undergo the first legislative veto override in Sacramento in about 30 years, which is truly a sad legacy.  Only in California could securing an override on an uncontroversial bill be something that could end a political career, as Cook acknowledged today.  An override would be at least a sign of life in the Legislature.

UPDATE: And that’s going to fizzle, because the Yacht Party in the Senate won’t go along with an override.  What point is there having the law on the books?  Paul Cook is going to us a gut-and-amend to put the same bill up tonight, anyway.

• A lot of rumbling about the water bill, which is being written completely in secrecy, and without the input of politicians who represent the Sacramento Delta.  Bass hinted at a bond issue to finance whatever comes out of conference, which would cost $600 $800 million in debt service annually without any consequent gains in revenue to pay for it.

UPDATE: The Fresno Bee has more.  The bond issue seems to be the sticking point.

Could be another long night…

UPDATE: Here’s some actual good news.  SB13, the bill to fund $16.3 million for domestic violence shelters by shifting some budget accounts, passed the Assembly on a bipartisan vote of 63-1.  I wrote yesterday about how the loss of this funding was simply devastating and indeed, a death warrant, to domestic violence victims across the state.  It moves to the Senate for concurrence.

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.

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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.”

With about 24 hours left in the Legislature’s current session, deals on the two main issues for which Arnold is demanding resolutions, water and prisons, do not seem likely.  On the water issues:

The water conference committee signed off last night on a five-bill package to address Delta conservation and water supply issues.

The conference report got the eight signatures needed to pass out of the committee in time for a floor vote, but none of the Republicans on the panel were on board with the plan.

Sen. Dave Cogdill, the lead Republican in the negotiations, called the conference report “an unbalanced package of bills that ignores the need for a reliable water supply and only caters to the interests of extreme environmentalists.” (CapAltert 9/10/09)

And that doesn’t even bring in the issue of how to pay for this stuff. Pretty much everybody is shying away from general obligation bonds, as our credit rating these days pretty much sucks and it is really expensive to borrow money.  May folks have been pushing the idea of revenue bonds, but it isn’t clear that we can really raise enough money to pay for everything that is on the table right now.

The prison reform issue isn’t really doing any better as the Assembly plan doesn’t have enough cost savings (or enough spine) and the Senate seems reluctant to pull the trigger on a half measure.  There may be something sort of development on prisons, but it would have to be very, very soon.

So, as Ernie Banks said, “It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame… Let’s play two!”

There’s lots of significant news in the Legislature’s last week regarding various bills, and it’s extremely difficult to keep up with it all, probably by design.  I should point out that, while the legislative calendar has an end date, there’s no actual reason for some of the forced bottlenecks that result in hundreds of bills being passed at the last minute.  It creates a shroud of secrecy in which special interests rule, and saps the public trust.  A Democratic leadership actually interested in positioning government as somewhat decent would remove these forced bottlenecks from the internal legislative rules and allow bills to be approved on a rolling basis.  That said, this is the system we have now, and here’s a bunch of news about various bills:

• A new bill would exempt non-General Fund workers from furloughs.  This would reverse one of the dumbest provisions in the budget bill, the practice of forcing furloughs on workers not paid by state government, saving almost no money and depriving people of needed services.  Of course, the Governor will probably veto this one, because he hates admitting how wrong he is.

• Democrats on that vaunted water committee have decided against floating a bond to pay for any restoration or overhaul of the Delta.  This means Republicans won’t vote for it, and very little will come of this very important committee thrown together at the last minute.  Some conference committee reports are here, but a deal looks remote, as it would need votes from some of the empty chairs in the Yacht Party.

• One bill that has cleared both chambers would set up “Education Finance Districts”, “in which three or more contiguous school districts can band together to try to increase local taxes.”  This is a small step to make it easier for districts to pass parcel taxes to fund schools, but at this point every little bit helps.  The 2/3 rule for approving such taxes would remain.

• With all the talk of health care reform, it’s notable that an anti-rescission bill has once again passed the legislature.  The bill would also simplify insurance forms.  Last session, Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it.  There’s something you don’t hear much about from the Democratic leadership – Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have banned insurance companies from dropping patients after they get sick.  He sided with the forces of insurer-assisted suicide.  This is your modern Yacht Party on this issue:

“Any of those who have read the various exposés in the Los Angeles Times and others . . . is aware that health insurers have admitted and acknowledged they engaged in a form of post-claims underwriting,” said Sen. Mark Wyland (R-Escondido). “It is unethical and, considering what some of these people have endured, it really borders on the immoral.”

However, Wyland said he would not vote for the bill because the Department of Insurance has proposed new rules to solve the problem, and he wants to see how they work.

Hey, give ’em a chance to see if the immorality stops!  If not, we can think it over.

• The Legislature may extend a homebuyer’s tax credit passed in a previous budget agreement that was nothing but a bailout for developers.  It only credited new construction, and was structured only to benefit high-income households who could afford new construction.  By the way, sales of new units have fell since this was enacted, so it’s not even meeting its intended purpose.  But it’s a giveaway to a special interest, so off the money may go, even though we cannot afford it at this time.

• A bill to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from children’s products was delayed after the Assembly couldn’t muster 41 votes.  The debate in the Assembly last night was pretty fierce.

• Cities and counties reacted angrily to a proposed bill to slow local government bankruptcies until vetted by the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission.  On the merits this looks to be a bill that would install more control on locals from Sacramento, although there are arguments on both sides.  But mainly it’s about the fate of union contracts in local bankruptcies, I don’t think either side would deny that.

• A roundup of other bills passed yesterday can be found here.

Over at KQED’s California, they have an interview with the AP’s Garance Burke about water policy in the state. It’s worth a listen.

As you may remember, the Democrats released a water plan last week and are focusing on the issue. However, as the comments point out, there is a substantial risk here.  Namely, the spectre of a peripheral canal.  The commission that would review the Delta issues would gain vast powers, powers that could even extend to the construction of a canal or an underground piping system to take water north to south around the Delta.