Budget Dance Avoids Missteps of Past

For too many years, Sacramento’s summer sun would sear politicians’ brains and they’d do the “Dance of Death.”

This was the annual budget-concocting ritual that was performed to devil music.

A legislative strategist once described the Dance of Death 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 scheme after another was ceremoniously sacrificed until there was agreement on a single survivor. Some summers, the dance became a marathon, dragging into August.

Tenderfoot Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger even got caught up in the demon dance. In his first budget summer, he slipped and called Democratic legislators “girlie men” -- the same lawmakers he’d previously been charming and courting. A small misstep, but it began a slow Schwarzenegger slide into ineffectiveness and unpopularity.

Last summer, the governor offered his own description of the exercise. It was “all part of the Kabuki,” he said, complaining about “this whole song and dance.... Everyone is beating on their chest and saying, you know, ‘We are the stronger ones. We’re going to stick to our policies and to our way of doing things.’ ”

This time, there was a noticeably different mood and dance step. Call it affectionate slow-dancing, old-fashioned but more productive.

No fire. Everybody kept their rhetoric cool.

No hard throwing -- only some gentle tossing back and forth of proposals.

No falling over dead and starting all over.

Unlike previous years, Democratic leaders didn’t run “drills” on the Assembly and Senate floors. They didn’t force votes on uncooked, uncompromised budgets in a juvenile attempt to portray Republicans as the obstructionists.

“All that did was make everybody look goofy and harden our positions,” recalls Senate GOP Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine.

Credit Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) for insisting that no budget bill be taken up until a deal was reached.

If Schwarzenegger signs the $131-billion spending plan Friday as expected, it will be only the fourth time in 20 years that a budget has been enacted by the July 1 start of the fiscal year. That means private firms -- nursing homes, prison food suppliers -- won’t have to worry about when they’ll be paid by the state. And Wall Street won’t be taking another wary look at the state’s credit rating.

Perhaps the primary credit for a rare on-time budget goes to the economy, which generated a windfall $7.5 billion in unexpected tax revenue. Legislators didn’t have to fight over whether to raise taxes, cut programs or keep borrowing.

But the main difference in this budget dance was the virtual brushoff of the “Big Five.”

Back about four governors ago -- but mainly with Pete Wilson -- an abomination called the Big Five was institutionalized. It consisted of the governor and four legislative leaders -- the two party honchos from each house. They’d sit around the governor’s office and write the final versions of big bills, including the biggest of all: the budget.

This relegated the other legislators to wallflower status, and many resented it.

Big Five negotiations make sense only in dire emergencies.

State government generally is most effective when it sticks to the system created by America’s founders: chief executives proposing and legislators disposing as coequal branches of government.

This time, the two Senate leaders -- who have a trusting relationship despite their philosophical schism -- insisted on shucking the Big Five and negotiating among themselves and Assembly leaders, not only on the budget but on the ambitious $37-billion infrastructure bond deal in May.

Separately, the Democratic and Republican leaders conferred periodically with the governor to make sure they were all in sync.

“Ever since we stopped doing the Big Five, things have started getting done,” says Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles). For one thing, he says, negotiating without the governor helps establish better relationships among legislative leaders.

Says Perata: “I believe all of us now are convinced that whatever reasons there were for getting into this Big Five practice, they no longer exist. We’ve demonstrated to ourselves that we can work together. We’re going back to the way it should be: The governor submits the budget, we rewrite it and give it to him. He uses his [line-item] veto.”

Credit the governor, however, for ducking out of the way after basically setting the agenda.

He wound up with some personal victories, like securing a total of $645 million for arts, music and PE in schools. I’ve never known of another governor who went all-out to improve these programs, which usually are the first to be cut in hard times.

Nunez captured $42 million to fund cost-of-living increases in January for 1.2 million aged, blind and disabled. The Legislature last year had voted to suspend those annual benefit bumps for three months, and Schwarzenegger wanted to stick with that plan.

Perata insisted on a $250-million, three-year program of state parks repairs.

Republicans stopped the governor and Democrats from spending $23 million for child healthcare programs that serve illegal immigrants.

But this budget still will spend $3.4 billion more than the state takes in. So it’s not really balanced, despite the dance spin.

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George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.