Choking on the Purse Strings : * Sacramento Just Is Not Doing Its Job

On Monday all interested parties to the most prolonged and wretched state budget crisis in anyone’s memory will reconvene in the bucolic humidity of the stultifyingly steamy state capital. At that point a deal should be made that gives Controller Gray Davis the authority to start writing checks again so that people can stop sweating through this ignoble impasse.

That would be a relief to all concerned. For if our representatives in Sacramento--the governor as well as the Legislature--were running a circus instead of a state, there would be some excuse for the high-wire behavior--not to mention the cartwheeling for effect--of the past few weeks. As it is, they’ve done everything but produce the budget required of them by the state Constitution. The clowning around has got to stop.

What has been holding everything up is Sacramento’s inability to agree on a formula for closing a budget gap estimated at $3.6 billion. Gov. George Deukmejian--assisted by his GOP allies in the Assembly--has been playing a particularly cool hand of poker. Insiders hope he will show his cards Monday. If so, that would not be a moment too soon for the many Californians who depend on state payments of various kinds.

On Thursday, as a temporary measure, U.S. District Judge Jack E. Tanner ordered the state to release millions in Medi-Cal funds to hospitals, doctors and pharmacies--and to workers who have not been paid for more than a month for their in-home care of the elderly and support services to the homeless. It’s too bad Judge Tanner doesn’t have the power to perform the additional justice of ordering the paychecks of the governor and legislators withheld.

Indeed, if the budget crisis isn’t resolved soon, the controller says he’ll not have the authority to issue any checks at all--including legislators’.

The problem this year has been compounded not only by a shortfall of tax revenue but a surfeit of ideology. The governor takes the view that the state faces a continuing structural problem--its obligations (outflow) continually exceed its revenue (inflow).

The Democratic opposition (the legislative majority, but not enough of a majority to override a gubernatorial veto) takes the view that the state has a minimum obligation to its neediest, and the budget must not be balanced on their backs.

The two views are inherently in conflict--and worsen as the economic downturn exists side by side with the ever-increasing state population. The governor is right that the issue needs to be faced, and he has skillfully drawn attention to the problem. But for now he should be satisfied with that accomplishment, and on Monday he should be statesmanlike and cut an honorable deal with his right honorable opposition.

That deal should take in an acceptable measure of budget cuts as well as a measure of, as George Bush would put it, “new tax revenue.”