Power plays, payback were bottom line in state budget standoff

Sacramento

Anyone who has followed the bizarre budget brawl in Sacramento must be asking, What was that all about?

It surely wasn’t about the budget, based on the final result. The $145-billion budget hardly changed from the time it passed the Assembly July 20 until it was sent by the Senate to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday, 51 days late.

Schwarzenegger did promise intransigent Senate Republicans that he’d line-item veto $700 million in spending -- $300 million more than he earlier had assured Assembly Republicans. But he did that weeks ago. The Senate GOP contends that by holding out, it finally gained the governor’s assurances that his cuts would be real, not gimmicky.

But everyone else in and around the Capitol thinks that could have been achieved on, say, July 21.

“We wound up with basically the same budget,” says Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines of Clovis.

The proof of that is in the final Senate votes. Only two Republicans -- Minority Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine and Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria -- voted for the spending plan. Twelve other Republicans didn’t see enough change in the plan from last month to support it.

“It’s going to lead to a $5-billion deficit next year,” explains Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta, the Senate GOP point man on the budget. “Did I want to affix my name to that end result for posterity?”

The Senate Republicans claim a victory against their boogeyman, Democratic Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown. In return for allowing the budget to pass, they were given legislation preventing Brown -- at least temporarily -- from filing global warming lawsuits that could block highway and flood control projects financed by voter-approved bonds. But that wasn’t a real threat anyway.

“That was nothing,” says Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) of the lawsuit bill.

No, what this stalemate mostly was about was an intense leadership struggle among Senate Republicans -- plus paying back Schwarzenegger for ignoring the GOP while teaming up with Democrats last year.

And for that we’re getting the third-most tardy state budget in recorded history. Vendors, hospitals, nursing homes, adult-care centers all have been stiffed. More than $3 billion in payments have been withheld while the state has stumbled along without a budget.

“At the end of the day, we hurt a lot of businesses,” asserts Maldonado, the only Senate Republican to break ranks and vote for the budget Aug. 1.

The stalemate was born after the 2006 election when some GOP conservatives made a run at ousting Ackerman, a very decent, amiable lawmaker who is not an outspoken ideologue.

Ackerman narrowly survived, but was forced to agree that any deal cooked up between him and the governor or Democrats would need to be approved by a majority of the party caucus, or eight members. That’s called tying the hands of the negotiator. Party caucuses always have given their leaders a free hand to negotiate, with the stipulation that they keep in touch.

So in this summer’s budget negotiations, Ackerman sometimes would tentatively agree to a deal, then not be able to sell it to his caucus.

“I have never seen that happen before -- where you have sort of a rolling set of negotiations and different people had different ideas at different times,” says Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland).

Inside the GOP caucus, there was jockeying to replace the leader -- either when he’s booted in a coup or termed out next year, if a term limit extension isn’t approved by voters. Senators are trying to outflank each other on the right to get into position, especially the two front-runners: Sens. Dave Cogdill of Modesto and George Runner of Lancaster.

“The budget holdout was mostly about leadership,” concedes one Republican lawmaker, who didn’t want to publicly contradict his Senate colleagues. “It was about who’s the most conservative.”

The compromise budget is pretty conservative for most people’s money. It increases spending by only 1% and doesn’t raise taxes. It strips $1.3 billion from public transit and freezes payments to the elderly poor, blind and disabled. It provides a tax break for Californians who buy yachts out of state.

Finally Tuesday, Ackerman walked into the GOP caucus and said the deal wasn’t going to get any better. They should deliver enough votes to pass it. The majority agreed, but only two votes were needed. Ackerman added his to Maldonado’s.

The whole ugly exercise represented an abuse of California’s rare requirement for a two-thirds majority legislative vote to pass a state budget. City councils, 47 states and Congress all pass budgets by simple majorities.

Sen. Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he’ll introduce a constitutional amendment to reduce the budget vote requirement to a simple majority. He wouldn’t try to change the two-thirds rule for a tax increase.

“All the countries on Earth that are democracies use the simple majority. Why can’t we do that in California?” he asks. “Local business people are just incredulous and frustrated to see government stumble so. We’ve caused a lot of people to lose money.”

Inevitably, there were vows from Democratic and Republican leaders to “reform” the budgeting process -- to commence serious negotiations earlier in the year, to not lollygag into summer. But that was an easy promise to make Wednesday. It had the ring of a hung-over reveler swearing off booze on New Year’s.

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george.skelton@latimes.com