Published on June 26, 2003
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER
ORINDA - Alameda County Sheriff Charlie Plummer has it in for Assemblyman Guy Houston, R-Livermore.
"He must be smoking rubber bands in his pipe, he's lost his senses," Plummer exclaimed Wednesday, citing Houston's opposition to any tax or fee increases to close California's gargantuan budget gap. "I'm going to be working on Guy Houston, just short of committing a crime."
Houston wasn't physically in the room, but he was a presence -- a not very popular one -- at a budget forum held by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, on Wednesday at the Orinda library. It was part of a Democratic statewide roadshow to turn up the heat on Republicans who won't even discuss tax hikes.
Later Wednesday, Houston said "everybody is entitled to their opinion and Mr. Plummer certainly has his."
"But in talking to my local mayors and elected officials, they've been telling me, 'Hold the line, don't raise taxes ... that's not what we need,'" he said, citing mayors H. Abram Wilson of San Ramon, Brian Swisher of Brentwood, Jeff Huffaker of Oakley and Darryl Clare of Galt.
Many officials resent Democrats for carting this "dog and donkey show" around the state when they should be in Sacramento working on the budget, Houston added.
Yet most lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have seemed paralyzed in recent weeks, and people at Wednesday's meeting suggested that if cajoling won't work, then perhaps threats would.
Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga, has vowed the GOP will back a primary challenger against any Republican who votes for a tax hike, so maybe Democrats should vow to support any who do so, Orinda City Councilman Gregg Wheatland advised.
Hancock agreed that Democrats could vow not to run anyone against these breakaway Republicans in the next general election. She also didn't dismiss fiddling with GOP legislative primaries, just as Gov. Gray Davis spent millions in 2002's GOP gubernatorial primary to hurt Richard Riordan so the more-beatable Bill Simon would prevail.
"I think we have to start thinking in new ways on every level," Hancock said.
It's gloves-off time, Hancock told 30 mayors, police chiefs and other officials Wednesday. Floating bonds to close the deficit while refusing to raise sales taxes to pay them off -- a GOP proposal -- is "like living on your credit card without having a job," she said.
Emptying and closing all state prisons wouldn't make a dent in this deficit, nor would closing all the University of California and California State University campuses, Hancock said. Many programs already have been cut, she said, and now only a sales tax increase and restoration of personal income taxes and motor vehicle licensing fees to late-1990s levels will do the trick.
Hancock said the effort to recall Davis aggravates the stalemate by removing the GOP's incentive to strike a deal. But she balked when West Contra Costa Unified School District board member George Harris III asked whether Davis should resign to avoid the recall and break the deadlock.
Forcing a duly elected governor to step down in order to get lawmakers to fulfill their constitutional duties isn't a precedent California wants to set, she said.