Two-Thirds Vote a Nutty Rule That Hinders Budget

We’re into Week 4 of the annual budget gridlock in Sacramento and there’s no legitimate excuse. None.

That said, there is a unique burden the California Legislature labors under, and it’s loony--the two-thirds vote requirement.

It takes a two-thirds majority of each house to send the governor a budget and end confusion for local governments trying to plan their own late budgets--as well as pay the private vendors the state has been stiffing since July 1.

The two-thirds requirement not only hinders budget passage, it:

* Is undemocratic because it denies the majority an opportunity to rule. In fact, it allows the majority party to escape accountability.

* Coerces minority members into voting for spending that many consider philosophically repugnant.

* Leads to pork-barrel budgeting by tempting legislators to trade their sorely needed votes for pet projects.

* Makes it easier for special interests to kill projects because they need only to persuade a third-plus-one of either house.

One piece of proof that the two-thirds requirement is nutty is that California has had it for 64 years, yet no other state has seen the wisdom of our ways. We stand alone. A handful of states require a supermajority vote in some situations--for example, in Illinois when the budget is late--but only California mandates it in every circumstance.

It was the brainchild of do-gooders who theorized that if the Legislature were straitjacketed, spending would be held down. Right!

“The supermajority requirement has just as often actually increased state spending,” a bipartisan Citizens Budget Commission reported in 1995. “Stories abound of ‘buying’ votes to reach the two-thirds.”

*

Slowly, sentiment in Sacramento is moving away from the two-thirds vote.

On Monday, Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) proposed a state constitutional amendment to eliminate the two-thirds requirement. They’d also do something advocated by many conservatives: Strip lawmakers and the governor of their salaries for each day the budget is late.

“Can there be any doubt that our budget process is an unmitigated disaster?” asked Lockyer. “Well, I’ve had enough. Let the majority rule and then if we fail to do our jobs, take away our pay. That’s what we’ll deserve.”

In the Assembly, two freshmen--Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch) and Jack Scott (D-Altadena)--last week introduced a similar measure with another twist: The budget would be good for two years, not just one.

Democrats long have talked wistfully of a majority budget vote. Republicans have been the obstacle, arguing that the two-thirds requirement is necessary so the minority can keep a check on the majority.

But this amounts to a double-check when the Legislature and governor’s office are controlled by different parties, as they have been for 20 of the last 30 years. California’s governor has the line-item veto to provide a check and balance.

Now, Gov. Pete Wilson and some Republican legislators are warming to the majority vote idea. “They could send something down and I could veto it,” Wilson noted. “But [now] this way, it doesn’t get to me.”

*

“We need to rethink the two-thirds [budget] vote as part of the Republican catechism,” says Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge). “It does not protect taxpayers from excessive spending. And it blurs accountability.”

Senate GOP Leader Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove agrees: “The majority party should live or die with whatever it puts out of the Legislature.”

Ditto Sen. Raymond N. Haynes (R-Riverside): “Unlike some of my [GOP] colleagues, I don’t think we’ll be in the minority forever.”

Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico) favors both majority rule and economic pain for tardy lawmakers. “If you take their pay, believe me, that budget will never, ever be late. If there’s one thing I know about that Legislature, they take care of themselves.”

Still, there probably aren’t enough like-minded Republicans to provide the necessary two-thirds legislative vote to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot. So Independent Sen. Quentin L. Kopp of San Francisco says he’ll sponsor a 1998 ballot initiative to dock lawmakers’ wages and scrub the two-thirds vote. He’ll dip into his own campaign kitty to begin collecting signatures.

“If it gets on the ballot,” he says, “it’s all downhill.”

Indeed, denying pay to politicians who won’t do their work on time just might have voter appeal.