Mood in the Capitol: Desperate

SACRAMENTO -- They woke Tuesday to a new fiscal year that for California lawmakers was nothing to celebrate: angry constituents, testy colleagues, uncompromising party leaders and a pile of warnings from clinics and community colleges edging toward the brink.

How glum was the mood under Sacramento’s Capitol dome? Two members of the Assembly, drawing on their medical backgrounds, suggested that the problems of their body may go deeper than politics. They may be psychological -- a kind of bipartisan neurosis.

Alan Lowenthal, who is both a third-term Democrat from Long Beach and a trained psychologist, said that he and GOP Assemblyman Keith Richman, a physician from Northridge, are prepared to offer their colleagues a bit of professional help.

“We thought we might hang a little wooden sign: ‘Psychotherapy: five cents for legislators,’ ” Lowenthal said. “Keith’s a doctor, so he offered to prescribe the drugs. We’re desperate around here, and we’re willing to do what we can to lift the mood.”

Not that the Legislature wasn’t talking. There was plenty of that. John Burton, Democratic leader in the Senate, said he talks to his Republican counterpart Jim Brulte “five times a day.” Burton said he recently spoke to Gov. Gray Davis. What about? reporters asked. He looked skyward, exasperated.

“The Giants-A’s game,” Burton said.

On Tuesday, lawmakers met in party caucuses and in committee hearings. They talked in hallways and on phones, to one another, to constituents and to reporters. But for all the dialogue, neither side would budge when it came to the major points of disagreement: Democrats oppose deeper spending cuts; the Republicans won’t abide a half-cent sales tax increase. Those same positions have prolonged the stalemate over months -- and now into the new fiscal year.

For many veteran lawmakers, the emotions of the moment were mixed. They have been down this budget road before -- survived standoffs, weathered public scorn, endured the brinksmanship that ultimately produces the two-thirds vote necessary to pass a budget.

Yet the forces at play are different this year, many conceded in interviews Tuesday. The financial stakes are higher, partisanship seems more acute, and the entire show is overshadowed by a gubernatorial recall effort that has injected election-year politics into what would normally be a midterm debate.

If the intensity of the debate was at least vaguely familiar to veterans, for newcomers, it could be dizzying. Because of the short tenure imposed by term limits, freshman lawmakers feel an urgency to build a record quickly and demonstrate they have what it takes to serve their constituents. The budget impasse is keeping all of that from happening.

Beyond that, many rookies come out of local government, where political philosophy has little to do with fixing roads or scooping up trash. Sacramento, they observed, is a far different place.

“I have 17 years’ experience in local government and have been through many fiscal crises, but there was always a willingness to work together to get through it,” said Assemblyman John Laird (D-Santa Cruz). “Here, it’s very partisan, and there is no incentive for cooperation.”

Lawmakers said they are grimly aware of the stakes.

Sen. Deborah Ortiz, a Sacramento Democrat, said her office phones were overloaded Tuesday with calls from state employees who fear they will not be paid their full salaries and may have to survive on the state minimum wage, as ordered by the state Supreme Court. She said other citizens are calling her, fearful that the school year might be shortened by two weeks to cut education costs.

Ortiz said she and her fellow senators share a “real sense of the pain we are causing to others by not getting to the common ground and compromising. [We] feel responsible for the fear and uncertainty and the anger that is out there with the electorate.”

But still, no deal is at hand, she conceded.

Through the Capitol on Tuesday, emotions ranged from bad to worse, crossing partisan and ideological lines. But there were some trends. Many Democrats appeared resigned, while some Republicans expressed satisfaction that at least they are not being taken for granted.

Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) said: “We worked our guts off. I tried to come up with everything I could: conventional, unconventional, out of the box, on the side of the box, under the box.”

For Republicans, by contrast, the stalemate suggests that they at last have the attention of the state’s majority party. After several budget years in which Democrats have gotten their way by peeling off a handful of Republican votes, Republicans now are preparing a list of spending cuts for consideration by the Legislature in the coming days.

State Sen. Dick Ackerman, an Orange County Republican who is vice chairman of the Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, said of the Democrats: “Their realizing that we’re not going to make any movement on tax increases and they’re not going to buy off [Republican] members will lead them to more serious negotiations.”

GOP Assemblyman Bill Maze (R-Visalia) said he is “dismayed but not surprised” about the deadlock, and professed confidence that agreement would be reached -- once Democrats realize that “this is a spending problem, unequivocally.”

“I’m always hopeful, and I always believe we can move forward,” Maze said. “The astonishing part to me is how Democrats are pointing fingers at us, saying we have no plan. They’ve controlled this house for years and have overspent continuously. And yet they stand up, look you in the face, and say, ‘The problem is, we just need more money so we’re going to tax you more.’ I think the public is fed up with that.”

But regardless of who’s to blame -- Democrats for overspending or Republicans for refusing to consider taxes -- some of those who work for the public worry that when the public gets fed up, it may not discriminate.

“It’s difficult not to describe my feelings with four-letter words,” Richman said Tuesday. “I’m very angry and embarrassed to be a member of the Legislature that has not resolved this issue.”

Times staff writers Nancy Vogel and Carl Ingram contributed to this report.