They locked the state legislature in the office last night and told them not to come out until they had a budget...but there is still no budget.
Tonight's tactic: to give them a good night's sleep and reconvene tomorrow at 11 AM.
That gives the mob 12 hours to soak torches in gasoline, sharpen pitchforks, and assemble on the south lawn of the capitol.
First, the nitty gritty: the holdup is the state senate, where three Republican votes are needed for passage. (The state assembly has the votes.) Dave Cox (R-Fair Oaks) was initially wavering, but has been a solid "no" since about midnight. Then Abel Maldonado (R-SLO) was the subject of intense lobbying focus. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is believed to be a possible "yes" vote. State senate president Darrell Steinberg (I went to law school with him but am not on a first name basis with him anymore, alas) now looks exhausted and ready to strangle Republicans.
I hate this budget. It means $2.841M will be cut from my tiny-but-nationally-recognized school district serving about 3000 kids, or $775/student, or $15K-23K/classroom, or about every fourth teacher. It cuts 10% from the once-great UC system and 10% from the CSU system. It raises income taxes and gas taxes, both of which hurt the wrong people. It has tax breaks for corporations!!! It has the usual batch of creative accounting/borrowing tricks that we've come to expect from California, but would shame Bernie Madoff's bookkeeper.
However, I hate the consequences of no budget more. Counties are suing the state...counties are threatening bankruptcy within months...IOUs will be mailed instead of cash to the neediest people in the state...Arnold is threatening to lay off 10,000 people...we might as well march westward and all jump into the Pacific Ocean.
Everyone in the state knows we have a huge problem. All the quilters at my local, very apolitical, quilting shop hung on every word of an update today. However, I fear the reaction. Voters are outraged enough to do truly stupid things, like favor a hard spending cap.
"spending cap...good."
"fire legislators who can't do work...good."
"arnoldbrains...good."
Instead, what the state needs is to reform Proposition 13 in two ways without affecting senior citizens living on fixed incomes in their family homes.
Repeal the 2/3 supermajority requirement.
And repeal Proposition 13's extension to commercial property, so that Disneyland is paying as much property tax as California Adventure. That adds an estimated $5 billion/year to the state, and makes the state less dependent on one source of revenue.
Even though Proposition 13 is the third rail of California politics, there's just the slightest chance that both may succeed.
From a Field Poll in June 2008:
The next two questions show viability with the voters of the idea of a split roll tax. Bear in mind that the responses here are made without the voters being provided with any more information (e.g., how commercial properties pay a lower and lower percentage of the overall property taxes because they turn over much less frequently than residential property).
Field asks one subset this question: "Proposition 13 reduced property taxes on both residential and commercial property. Would you approve or disapprove of changing Prop. 13 to permit business and commercial property owners to be taxed at a higher rate than owners of residential property?"
46.5% are in support of allowing businesses to pay property taxes at a higher rate than residential owners and 43.5% are opposed. This includes Democratic support (55% to 33.6%) and independent support (46.4% to 43.9%--within the margin of error) and opposition by Republicans (56.5% to 35.5%). This concept has its strongest support amongst younger voters and support for it grows with more educated voters....
Another subset was asked: "Proposition 13 reduced property taxes on both residential and commercial property. Would you approve or disapprove of changing Prop. 13 to permit owners of residential property to be taxed at a lower rate than business and commercial property owners?"
If it includes lowering residential taxes, support increases to 61.1% are in support of a differential treatment of business property owners and residential property owners. Opposition is only at the level of 27.5%. This one passes overwhelmingly by Democrats and independents, and even passes with Republicans by 52.5% to 38.1%.
Back in the halcyon days of June 2008, voters didn't want to change the 2/3 supermajority requirement, but a new poll shows that 55% of the voters will now consider that change.
These are good changes. They're better than this budget, a hard spending cap, or Arnoldbrains.