Assembly Politics Put Budget on Hold Again

California’s estimated $101-billion budget was dealt a surprising setback Wednesday when key Republicans who voted to approve the package earlier this week said they would not back legislation needed to implement the spending plan.

Rancho Cordova Assemblyman Anthony Pescetti, one of four Republicans to defy their party Monday and vote for the 2001-02 budget supported by Gov. Gray Davis and his Democratic colleagues, said he would not throw his support behind three measures that accompany the budget.

He said he could not vote for the legislation because one piece, for example, deals with funding for abortion. Another, he said, carries out Davis’ proposal to use more than a billion dollars earmarked for transportation projects to instead balance the budget.

“These are principle issues for me,” Pescetti said. “And I won’t vote against my principles.”

Republican Assemblyman Dick Dickerson of Redding said he was not inclined to vote in favor of any of the so-called trailer bills. There are an estimated eight pieces of legislation that accompany the budget and that, like the spending plan itself, require at least four Republican votes in addition to Assembly Democratic votes to achieve the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

The lawmakers’ decisions to withhold their support for the various measures threw the budget process into limbo. As of late Wednesday night, none of the bills had been brought up for a vote in the Assembly.

The legislation being held up directs the spending approved in the budget, so failure to pass it prevents the budget from being implemented.

Dickerson said negotiations were underway between Democratic and Republican leaders to resolve the Republicans’ problems with the legislation. One issue probably under discussion was a Republican demand that voters be allowed to decide whether sales tax revenue raised on gasoline should be permanently dedicated to transportation.

An agreement between party leaders on that issue would probably garner Republican support on the measure that deals with the shift of transportation money proposed by Davis.

Wednesday’s developments created a new set of headaches for Assembly Democrats and their leader, Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), in particular. They won approval of the budget blueprint in the Assembly on Monday after an intense lobbying effort that resulted in the four Republicans voting with the Democrats to provide the required two-thirds approval.

But it became clear Wednesday that the Democrats had not specified to the Republicans that their vote for the budget meant that they were expected to vote for the measures that go along with it.

“Any discussion I had with anyone in [Democratic] leadership had nothing to do with the trailer bills,” said Assemblyman David Kelley, the Idyllwild Republican who helped Democrats pass the budget Monday but who remained undecided on the other bills.

A possible reason for the confusion is the way in which Democrats secured the Republican votes. Although there were some discussions among the four Republican lawmakers and Democratic leaders, much of the lobbying effort to persuade the lawmakers was carried out by county sheriffs and farmers.

They were focused on winning votes for the budget, which had been enriched with tax breaks for agricultural communities and millions of dollars for rural sheriffs, and not necessarily the lower-profile measures that implement the plan.

It remained unclear whether Pescetti’s and Dickerson’s stances on the legislation could place into jeopardy an array of special funding items tucked into the spending plan that benefit their specific districts.

Dickerson, for example, decided to vote for the budget on Monday, in part, because $8 million had been added for the Klamath River Basin farmers who are struggling with drought-stricken fields.

The Democrats also included $500,000 for an Italian Cultural Museum in Sacramento--a perk added to entice Pescetti to back the overall proposal--in addition to other projects dotted throughout the plan for the benefit of individual legislators and their constituents.

Following its passage in the Assembly on Monday, the budget blueprint was forwarded to the upper house, where Senate Leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) said he would not bring it up for consideration until lower-house lawmakers approved the series of bills that implement the budget.

Other complicating factors included the question of whether Senate Democrats had secured the single Republican vote needed to pass the budget in the upper house. In a vivid demonstration of how close leading lawmakers expect the vote to be, Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) was called back from a family reunion in Italy so that she could vote on the budget.

Burton told Senate lawmakers on Wednesday that if the budget is not approved in the upper house by today that they should be prepared to come in over the weekend. Lawmakers are scheduled to begin a monthlong break starting Friday.