Republicans also make good points

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.”

If I were an ambitious state controller looking for a route to the governor’s office, I’d refuse to write the check, guard the state taxpayers’ money and make the feds haul me off instead in glorious contempt. Controller John Chiang didn’t quite sound ready to go there. The Democrat merely said he couldn’t hand over the money without a legislative appropriation or court order.

“A court order,” he did caution, “would put the state at severe risk for defaulting on debt service and critical payments to schools and to doctors and healthcare providers who serve our poor, elderly and disabled residents.”

What makes this particularly galling is that among the 170,000 state inmates are an estimated 19,000 illegal immigrants whose incarceration should be paid for by the federal government.

The feds are kicking in only 10 cents on the dollar for their imprisonment. In the fiscal year starting July 1, they’re expected to cost state taxpayers $907 million.

“We should put every one of those prisoners on a bus and drop them off at a federal facility and say, ‘Have a nice day,’ ” Villines says.

“There’s an irony,” Cogdill adds, “in a federal court trying to tell the people of California how to deal with our prison population when a significant percentage of that population is the responsibility of the federal government.”

What especially upsets the two Republican leaders, they say, is that the court receiver isn’t specifying exactly how he’d spend the $7 billion.

“Where in government do you get a $7-billion blank check on the come, ‘Just trust me,’ ” says Villines. “We need to see how this is going to work. We should call their bluff and say ‘No.’

“If this goes all the way to the Supreme Court, so be it. I’m in the mood to file a Supreme Court case.”

Nobody -- neither the governor nor Democrats -- should be rolling over for an unelected lower federal court. But everybody -- including the court and prisoners’ attorneys -- should get in a mood to seriously compromise on a much less expensive, more practical way to improve inmates’ healthcare.

As for the Republicans’ proposed budget reforms, they’re pretty simple: a spending limit based on population growth and inflation, a rainy day fund, multiyear fiscal planning, and a two-thirds vote requirement to raise fees.

Forget the two-thirds vote nonsense. But talk about everything else.

“If they don’t like our plan, what’s theirs?” Villines asks.

Give Republicans some sort of budget reform and business regulatory relief. Toss in more spending cuts. Then they’d doubtless help close tax loopholes and balance the budget.

The Capitol could use budget discipline, and Republicans need some wins.

They’re right-wingers, but sometimes they’re just plain right.

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george.skelton@latimes.com