Governor vetoes $4-billion package of budget cuts

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday afternoon vetoed the largest piece of a $4-billion package of bills lawmakers approved in recent weeks to reduce the state’s nearly $20-billion budget deficit.

The bill contained an estimated $2.2 billion in spending reductions, according to Democrats, some of them proposed by the governor himself.

But Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and GOP lawmakers had criticized it as a parlor trick because Democrats, who hold majorities in the Senate and Assembly, made cuts to next year’s budget even though they have not yet approved it, which is expected to be a much more difficult task.

In essence, the bill was merely a road map for future cuts, the Republicans said.

In his veto message, Schwarzenegger wrote that the bill, AB X8 2, “does not actually implement spending reductions. . . . The longer the Legislature delays action on real reductions, the more difficult the choices become.”

Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), called the veto “baffling.”

“What we sent to the governor represents a 20% reduction in the state’s budget deficit without raising taxes and he’s just rejected a major component of it,” he said.

Measures in the bill that the governor has supported include a proposed $811-million reduction in prison medical expenses and a 5% reduction to the state worker payroll that was to have saved $580 million.

The bill also included $182 million in savings from commuting sentences of undocumented immigrant prisoners, which Schwarzenegger had previously proposed. But he has since scaled back the estimated savings from that to less than $20 million. He called the Legislature’s numbers “unrealistic” and said they “will not be achieved.”

Schwarzenegger on Monday signed seven budget-related measures that would save an estimated $200 million through fund shifts and other maneuvers.

He has yet to act on a bill passed last week that would skirt restrictions on how gas taxes can be used and free up about $1.1 billion.

michael.rothfeld

@latimes.com