Labor Pressures GOP on Budget

With California’s budget stalemate dragging into its third week, special interest groups worried about the outcome are pressuring holdout Republicans where it hurts them most: at home.

Individual GOP legislators are being targeted by organized labor in their home districts, where voters may not be as savvy about the complex political fight surrounding passage of the $99-billion spending plan.

To get voters’ attention, labor groups are organizing rallies, including one scheduled for today in front of the Granada Hills office of Assemblyman Keith Richman (R-Northridge) and another planned for Thursday in the San Diego area represented by Assemblywoman Charlene Zettel (R-Poway).

“This is how the budget could possibly get resolved ... if the public brings pressure to bear on their elected officials,” said Jeanine Meyer Rodriguez, state council campaign coordinator for the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 400,000 nurses, janitors and other workers.

The budget has passed the Senate but is stalled in the Assembly, where Republicans and Democrats are at odds over nearly $4 billion in new taxes and other new revenue that Democrats are seeking to help close a $23.6-billion shortfall. Republicans want deeper spending cuts instead of tax hikes.

The stalemate caused Gov. Gray Davis to miss a July 1 deadline for signing a new spending package into law.

The California Professional Firefighters waded into the fray Tuesday by airing a television spot in the Sacramento area that features a firefighter, images of wildfires and planes dousing flames with chemicals. Viewers are warned that this could be the worst fire season ever and are urged to contact local GOP legislators, Assembly Republican leader Dave Cox and Assemblyman Anthony Pescetti, and to ask them to do their jobs.

“Because of election-year politics at the Capitol, some legislators are holding up the budget,” the firefighter in the ad says. “They’re pushing for across-the-board cuts that could cripple our state firefighting services.”

Carroll Wills, a spokesman for the firefighters, said his group is airing the spot to try to end the budget stalemate by putting pressure on individual lawmakers via their constituents.

“We’re keenly aware of the potential impact [the television spot] can have, and we’re hoping it has it,” Wills said.

However, Pescetti was holding firm in his opposition to the proposed spending plan, particularly the tax increases and what he says is its failure to fix a structural problem that could cause California to experience deficits for the next five years. Pescetti said Republicans have never advocated or supported cuts to police or firefighters.

“I’m not sure how many times or how many ways I have to say, ‘No, I’m not voting for the budget,’ ” Pescetti said.

In Fresno, the Service Employees International Union organized a rally last week during which local officials called on Assemblyman Mike Briggs (R-Fresno) to vote for the budget. Briggs noted that the media contact for the event was based out of Los Angeles.

“I think they’re being used a little,” Briggs said of the Fresno officials who showed up at the rally.

Briggs said the rally did nothing to weaken his opposition to the spending plan--much to the chagrin of Fresno County Supervisor Juan Arambula, who participated in the rally. Arambula said the lack of a state budget is making it difficult for Fresno officials to craft a new county budget.

State funding for probation and children and family services provided by the county, he added, are also being put at risk by the delay.

“He’s playing games at the expense of his constituents,” Arambula said of Briggs. “He’s decided apparently to throw his lot in with the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who don’t really care if we have a budget or not.”

“There are groups that have their own little needs they like taken care of and I don’t mean to belittle them,” Briggs said, “but you don’t pass a $100-billion budget so that a group can get their $200,000 issue taken care of.”

Conservatives are employing similar techniques to dissuade Democrats in swing districts from voting for the spending plan. The California Republican Party aired a radio ad last month in the district of Assemblywoman Barbara Matthews (D-Tracy), urging listeners to tell her to keep her campaign promise to stop raising taxes.

“Now that Gray Davis wants to hike the car tax so we pay for the budget mess he’s created, guess who he’s counting on to raise taxes again? That’s right, wasteful spender Barbara Matthews,” the ad said.