Barbecues, Fireworks and Legislators’ Seasonal Budget Dance

They can’t resist, these Sacramento politicians. Now even the new guy’s doing it, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The summer sun heats up, brains begin to fry, the devil music sounds and they do the “Dance of Death.”

A legislative strategist once explained the ritual to me this way: “Everybody dances around the fire. They throw stuff at us. We throw stuff at them. Everybody falls over dead and we start all over.”

One budget proposal after another is ceremoniously sacrificed until there’s agreement on a single survivor.

The current principal dancer is Schwarzenegger, who’s trying to whip up public outrage over the Democratic-dominated Legislature leaving town for the July Fourth weekend without passing a state budget.

“We are now three days into the new fiscal year, and we still don’t have a budget. This is embarrassing, and it’s a shame,” Schwarzenegger told a small rally at a Sherman Oaks firehouse Saturday.

I say, praise the revolution and let’s celebrate. The Capitol and all of California are better off because our lawmakers did go home. They need to be with family and friends and to reflect. Clear their minds. Cool off.

Same for Schwarzenegger. Instead of staging anti-Legislature rallies up and down California, he should be reading up on American civics -- reading about those Founders setting up two coequal branches of government with checks and balances, with separate powers to propose and dispose. The executive signs or vetoes bills; the Legislature amends and maybe passes them.

There is nothing in any constitution that grants the League of California Cities, for example, control over the state budget. It’s a lobby group that has been playing the devil music and riling up the governor and other Capitol pols -- or, to quote Beverly Hills City Manager Roderick Wood, “the morally insane” and “mental midgets” of the Legislature. Not a good opener for negotiations.

Schwarzenegger has been demanding that Democratic leaders allow floor votes on a budget deal he cooked up with cities and counties. Under this pact, the state would grab $2.6 billion from the locals over two years in exchange for a constitutional guarantee that this would never happen again. Democrats want the flexibility to raid local coffers in an emergency. They also object to locking into the state Constitution a flawed local tax system.

The governor is playing an old, boring political game that’s part of the ritualistic dance -- trying to push Democrats into floor votes so they’ll be on record as the killers of his local government proposal. Then they can be blamed. It’s a Capitol game called “jamming.”

Somebody -- maybe a Republican “mental midget” -- must have told him this was clever politics, as if the Democrats’ burying the bill without a vote wasn’t enough of an “on record” execution. As if voters really cared.

Schwarzenegger suddenly has stumbled into a budget stalemate primarily because he over-promised. He certainly has over-promised the voters -- on taxes, services, budget-balancing. But in his eagerness to make deals -- he prides himself in being a deal-maker -- the governor also has over-promised interest groups.

His rookie mistake on the local government issue was in cutting two conflicting deals -- one early on with the cities and counties, then a compromise last week with Democratic legislative leaders.

He didn’t run the first deal past legislators, who ultimately had to approve it. And he didn’t confer back with local officials before signing off on the legislative compromise. The locals screamed, and Schwarzenegger opted to stand with them, even though they don’t have any votes in the Capitol.

“We [legislators] have 120 votes, and the cities don’t have one,” notes Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). “At a minimum, they ought to work with the Legislature if they want to advance the cause of local government.”

Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) was more direct Saturday in criticizing the Schwarzenegger-local government pact: “It was drafted very selfishly and very stupidly.”

Sacramento’s claim on local government money traces largely to the voters’ passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. That initiative drastically reduced local governments’ property tax revenues and allowed the state to divvy what was left. Spending a huge state surplus, the Legislature also approved a $4.4-billion “bailout” for local governments -- cities, counties, schools -- and they’ve been wards of Sacramento ever since.

“We should have left them hanging,” Burton said.

As for Schwarzenegger’s stumping the state to pressure the Legislature, the Senate leader said: “It doesn’t faze me. Bring it on.”

And they were all getting along so genteelly, as I observed last week. No food fights. No sandbox games. OK, I was perhaps Pollyannaish.

Still, this is minimal rancor compared to past years.

“People aren’t running around with scissors,” notes finance department spokesman H.D. Palmer, a veteran of many budget brawls. “People are not throwing high and inside.”

But at some point, pleasant negotiating took an ugly turn into the Dance of Death. Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders need to sit back down and bargain. Tune out the devil music. Don’t let this dance become a marathon.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com. Read previous columns at latimes.com/skelton.