Assembly Under Lockdown Prior to Budget Vote

As California heads into its second month without a budget, Assembly leaders were preparing for another budget showdown Tuesday night, locking all but a handful of the members in the chambers.

“We’re going to stay until it gets done,” said Speaker Doris Allen (R-Cypress), among the members who is able to come and go, adding that at some point during the night she intended to put the budget and related bills that implement it to a vote. “It could be quite late.”

Assembly members had to get special permission to leave, and Assemblyman Brian Setencich (R-Fresno), Allen’s lieutenant, was not giving out passes unless members promised to return quickly, or had negotiating to do outside the chambers.

Most Republicans were holed up in their lounge off the Assembly floor watching “A Current Affair.” Democrats were conferring in their lounge over chocolate chip cookies.

Gov. Pete Wilson, who canceled plans to attend the national governors convention this week in Vermont, hopes to hit the campaign trail in the Northeast this weekend.

Despite that, the Republican governor had not even placed calls to the half-dozen Republican holdouts who are refusing to vote for the $57.3-billion budget, either because it contains no tax cut or because it includes $40 million for abortions for poor women.

Nor had Wilson met personally with Los Angeles Democrats who are holding up the budget while they seek aid for financially strapped Los Angeles County, even though they are uncertain exactly how the county would spend the extra money.

“There are the votes to put the budget out,” one Northern California Democratic Assemblywoman said. But by late Tuesday, Democrats who are not from Los Angeles were unwilling to leave their Los Angeles comrades on their own. And what had the demands from the Los Angeles delegation achieved?

“Zilch,” Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) said.

The state Senate passed the budget by a 31-9 vote on Saturday, four more than the minimum required. But in the fractious Assembly, the brinkmanship continued, 32 days after the July 1 constitutional deadline for approving the budget. The Assembly has twice voted on the budget and rejected it.

Twelve of 16 Assembly Democrats from Los Angeles County held a press conference to restate their position that Wilson should help the county as part of the state budget deal.

“Los Angeles County wants the ability to solve their problem,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “All they are asking is for the state to get out of the way.”

The Los Angeles legislators are pressing Wilson to sign a bill passed Saturday that would let Los Angeles County use for five years $75 million a year in sales tax revenue earmarked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The bill also would permit Orange County to use $70 million a year in transportation money for 15 years. In a rare alliance with Los Angeles Democrats, Orange County Republican Assemblyman Curt Pringle is trying to convince Wilson to sign the bill, which could be the final piece of the budget deal.

For several days now, the Los Angeles Democratic delegation has been insisting that the $75 million is needed to help keep the county’s health care system operating.

But disagreements among Los Angeles County supervisors over how to use the money hampered their efforts, as did Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who is asking Wilson to veto the bill.

“What’s holding it up is the fact that Los Angeles seems to be so badly split,” Wilson said in a radio interview. “This is a bill to which the transportation authorities and Mayor Riordan are violently objecting . . . I don’t have any particular feeling about the bill one way or the other.”

Until Tuesday’s press conference, Los Angeles Democrats did not say how much money they wanted for the troubled county, largely because county officials did not come to the Capitol with their plea for help until July, when the budget was all but settled.

But on Tuesday, Katz and Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles) said the county needs authority to raise $379 million to $400 million this fiscal year.

To get that money, they suggested again that the county be allowed to levy a “tipplers’ tax” on alcohol served at bars and restaurants. But none of them realistically expect such legislation to pass, given that it received a mere 15 votes on Saturday, far short of the 41 needed.

Katz met with Wilson’s aides during the day. But he stopped between meetings to say, “There is nothing new.”

The lower house did take a major step toward approving the budget package Monday when 54 Democrats and Republicans approved a related measure that contains $395 million in welfare cuts the governor wanted.

While Los Angeles lawmakers continue to hold up the budget, Wilson is insisting that the Assembly pass one of the most contentious budget-related bills, which cuts $58 million used to provide prenatal care for illegal immigrants.

Wilson has linked the cut in aid to pregnant illegal immigrants to one of his pet budget-related bills, a measure providing $20 million in health care for poor children who are legal residents, but qualify for no other health care.

Some Republican moderates oppose the cut in prenatal services for illegal immigrants. But the main opposition comes from Democrats, who charge that Wilson wants the bills passed so he can cite them in his presidential campaign.

Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles) called the Wilson-backed child health care measure “another attempt to provide services that exclude children who are undocumented,” and “one of the most political bills of all.”

But Assemblyman David Knowles (R-Placerville) called for an end to “state-only giveaway programs to what many refer to as illegal intruders on our soil.”

Adding to the state’s budget problem, Superior Court Judge James T. Ford of Sacramento issued a temporary restraining order late Tuesday barring the state from moving $63 million from tobacco tax revenue into general health care. The money was set aside by Proposition 99 for specific anti-tobacco programs and research.

The transfer was a part of the budget deal, raising the possibility that the spending plan is out of balance even before it is adopted.

The state will be back in court next month on the issue. But Frederic Woocher, attorney for Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, which brought the suit, noted that a similar transfer by the state last year failed.