Small Waste, Big Pain

The good old days for Sacramento were only months ago, when lawmakers were happily distributing the largess of a $9-billion state budget surplus. Now, the annual budget process is a shambles of backbiting and penny-pinching, courtesy of the electricity crisis and a faltering economy. Gov. Gray Davis and Democratic leaders are going through the unpleasant ritual of cutting hundreds of millions from the revised $102.9-billion spending plan Davis submitted in May.

With $7 billion spent to buy electric power since January and with revenue forecasts shrinking, nearly all new programs proposed for the coming year are out. The struggle now is to safeguard core programs, starting with public education. Even there, Davis’ much-criticized $65-million proposal to extend the middle school year is expected to bite the dust.

Everyone agrees on the need to increase the budget reserve to guard against further revenue declines. Fiscal experts usually urge an emergency account equal to 3% of a state’s general fund budget. For California this year that would be about $2.5 billion.

While they talk millions here and billions there, some of the sharpest battles are over the payment of $30,000 a month by the governor’s office for two former Clinton-Gore administration hit men hired as political consultants and some $12,000 already spent to hold five poetry reading sessions for employees of the Resources Agency.

Minority Republicans have raised these issues with glee. They are absolutely correct about the hiring at state expense of Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane, ostensibly to temporarily fill in for Davis’ resigned communications director and to scout for his successor.

Fabiani and Lehane are also advising Davis on the energy crisis even though another of their clients is Southern California Edison. This is a blatant conflict of interest that must end now. If Davis really needs these two so badly, he should pay them out of his $26-million campaign war chest.

Poetry is impossible to justify at a time when valuable resource programs, including urban parks and recreation, face severe budget cuts. Too bad the money’s gone.

These expenditures are tiny in terms of the whole budget. But such small, stupid decisions make it much harder to achieve agreement on the big, tough calls.

Presumably the Legislature and governor will agree on a compromise budget by their June 30 deadline. There’s no doubt about those consultants, however. Get them off the state payroll now. And as for poetry, it’s available free at the library and on the Internet.