Pay attention to GOP lawmakers

SACRAMENTO -- Republicans holler a lot in the Capitol but aren't heard. They should be.

Two examples last week:

* They complained again about a federal court that is threatening to back a U.S. government truck up to the state vault and haul off $7 billion to build healthcare facilities for California prisoners. This at a time when the Legislature and governor are struggling to resolve a $15-billion state deficit.

* Minority party leaders offered a starting point for budget negotiations. They proposed reforms in budgeting that were immediately kissed off. Had Democrats listened, they'd have heard subtle hints that if the reforms were dealt with seriously, Republicans might end up voting for tax increases -- er, loophole-closings.

Both issues are related.

While Sacramento is agonizing over program cuts for schools, the disabled, elderly poor and welfare kids, a federal court-appointed receiver wants to grab $7 billion for healthcare improvements in state prisons.

"If he can find $7 billion, more power to him," Senate GOP Leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto told a news conference.

"If he does," Assembly GOP Leader Mike Villines of Clovis later told me, "we're going to take it for other stuff."

Villines continued: "If we had $7 billion, everyone in California would have healthcare and a personal trainer. I mean, seriously, it's crazy. . . .

"You show me a community of 170,000 that has $7 billion in healthcare."

That's roughly the size of California's stacked-like-cordwood prison population.

How we got to this point is complicated with many twists and turns. Multiple court cases are involved.

In the most pertinent case, prisoners alleged that they were being denied constitutionally adequate medical care. The state -- under former Gov. Gray Davis -- stipulated that the prisoners had a point and agreed to federal court jurisdiction to enforce improvements.

The court receiver, law professor J. Clark Kelso, now demands $7 billion to renovate existing clinics and build 10,000 beds for ailing and mentally ill inmates.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislators agreed to raise the $7 billion by selling bonds. Senate Republicans blocked the bond bill, pointing out that last year the Legislature authorized $7.4 billion in bonds to add 53,000 new beds for prisoners -- healthy and sick. That money still hasn't been spent.

One thing at a time, Republicans assert. Let's get some coordination here.

Last week, the impatient receiver fired off a strong letter to his boss, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. The state's failure to come through with the money "is not a result of inadvertent neglect or mere incompetence," Kelso wrote. "It is a result of conscious, deliberate obstruction."

He was laying a case for the judge to issue an order seizing the state money -- starting with $70 million immediately and the rest over two years.

Yes, a federal judge can reach into a state vault and take what he wants, Kelso wrote in a memo to Henderson. That right is "unassailable," he asserted, because a federal court "has inherent power to enforce its judgments."

Maybe. Maybe not, says Molly Arnold, chief counsel for the state Finance Department. It's a case-by-case situation, she says, "and not at all an easy thing to do -- to trump a state constitution."