For Legislators It’s Deadline, Schmedline

The Legislature shall pass the budget bill by midnight on June 15 of each year.

--California Constitution, Art. 4, Sec. 12.

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Irresponsible. Inept. Lethargic. Cowardly. Childish. Arrogant.

Choose your adjective to describe a Legislature that again has missed the budget deadline and really doesn’t seem to care.

It probably doesn’t care because neither do most Californians. They’ve become used to this summer silliness in Sacramento. It’s an old, stale story.

“It’s not even amusing,” says Republican consultant Sal Russo. “But it is a joke.”

Some Californians do care, however. They are the vendors whose checks are being held up. Anybody who has done business with the state after the new fiscal year began July 1--sold food to a prison, treated a patient on Medi-Cal--won’t be paid until a new budget is enacted.

“It’s frustrating trying to explain to innocent, hard-working Californians who are dependent on state checks that they’re not getting paid because of the political volleyball going on in Sacramento,” says Controller Kathleen Connell, a Democrat. “Many don’t have the ability to survive.”

Counties also are being penalized. They were due $200 million in vehicle fees last Thursday and Connell had to hold back the money. “Counties are strapped for cash,” she says.

Yet there’s no sense of urgency in the Capitol. “It’s strange,” says Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

Many lawmakers agree. Sen. Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga): “I really don’t understand. There seems less of a sense of urgency about passing a budget than I’ve ever seen in the Legislature.”

But Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) got irritated when I observed he didn’t seem all that concerned about the budget tardiness.

“What am I to do if I’m concerned? Do I jump up and down?” the Senate leader asked. “I’m concerned.”

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Lockyer now is meeting with other members of the “Big Five” in an effort to negotiate a budget settlement. The other members are Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno), the two minority leaders--Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) and Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove)--and Gov. Pete Wilson.

They meet privately at all hours in the governor’s office. As they get closer to an agreement, reporters will pack the governor’s reception lobby waiting for the Big Five to emerge with any scraps of information, any pithy quotes. Perhaps there’ll be a TV camera or two. Politicians love such attention.

Myself, I think the Big Five is more a problem than a solution--a chief contributor to legislative vacillation, inertia and weak spines.

I’d like to see our legislators get back to doing what they’re supposed to do--on the budget, on welfare, on taxes, education. . . . Get back to using the system designed by the Founding Fathers. Back to being a separate, coequal branch of government that compromises, writes its own bills and then sends them to the governor.

Sure, the governor must be in on the negotiating. The object, after all, is to get bills signed. But in the old days, gubernatorial deal-making was done quietly, ad hoc and with committee chairs and individual lawmakers as much as with house leaders.

Somewhere along the line, this Big Five thing got institutionalized. Now the governor is a formal part of the legislative process, the chair of a super-committee that meets with doors closed to the public.

That makes sense in a true emergency. Then-Gov. George Deukmejian created the Big Five concept in 1983 to deal with a fiscal crisis. Wilson and the Legislature certainly needed it in 1991 to deal with a monster deficit. But in the Wilson era, the Big Five has become Big Brother.

And it has become inbred. Most Assembly members, inexperienced because of term limits, know no other way. They don’t know what it is to make the tough political decisions. “That’s a Big Five issue,” they tell themselves.

Democrats and Republicans won’t compromise until the governor is ready. The big committees have become less relevant. Too many lawmakers have become potted plants.

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The Legislature has failed seven times in the last 10 years to pass a budget by the start of the new fiscal year. Twice it dawdled for a month and once for two months.

There’s always an excuse. This summer it’s welfare reform, undeniably a tough issue politically and philosophically.

But legislators signed on for tough issues when they asked voters for the job.

Right now, the adjectives we should be using to describe the Legislature are responsible, self-reliant, functional and finished.