Broken process yields a bad budget for California

Appeared on California Progress Report

--by Assembly Budget Committee Chair John Laird (D-Santa Cruz)

The final state budget has been signed by the governor, and it’s bad news for anyone who looks to the state for health care, lower fees for higher education, human services, public transit, library programs, or protecting parks and the environment.

The budget delay also demonstrated why the budget process is broken.  California is one of just three states—the others being Arkansas and Rhode Island—that require a two-thirds vote of each legislative house to approve a budget.

Even though the legislative budget process—highlighted by public hearings and a bi-partisan conference committee—produced a balanced budget on-time, Republican Senators held the budget up for 52 days.  The budget that was held up also included the largest budget reserve in the history of the state.  And it included no new taxes.

The 14 Senators blocking the budget not only wanted massive cuts in spending, they also wanted to leverage issues that were not even included in the budget, such as Attorney General actions against local governments on the fight against global warming.  At one point, they even wanted to get around voters’ disapproval of parental notification for teens receiving reproductive health services.

As chair of both the Assembly Budget Committee and the Joint Conference Committee that completed the on-time legislative budget, our committees conducted a six-month public process on each of the thousands of pieces of the budget. The process begins following the governor’s January presentation of his proposed budget, concludes in June, and includes approximately 150 bi-partisan budget committee and subcommittee hearings held in the Assembly and the Senate.

Even though Republicans were in the room and at the table for every stage of the public process, they chose not to make their demands until after the process was over—and their demands could be made in private negotiations without the benefit of a public hearing.  That is unfair to anyone who wants the process to be transparent and done entirely in the light of day.

Following demands made by the Senators who blocked passage of the budget and using his line-item veto powers, the governor has vetoed $700 million from the budget—cuts beyond the Republican-Democratic compromise reached in the Assembly in July. 

The governor’s vetoes ran across the budget, and included eliminating funds for the homeless mentally ill; adult protective services (which assist adults who are dependent, abused or have dementia- or Alzheimer's-related issues); state parks maintenance and acquisition; fish and game wardens; public libraries statewide; and community college basic skills courses. 

The Governor also removed some of the last money destined to go to public transit from so-called gas tax “spillover” funds.  Without these funds, transit systems across the state face the possibility of cutting bus routes and raises rates. 

The impact of the transit cuts go beyond the obvious ones, such as those who depend on public transit to get around and worse traffic congestion.  These cuts also impact our fight against global warming because investing in public transit is widely accepted as a key strategy for reducing greenhouse gases.

It is time to reform this process.  While it’s fine to have a two-thirds vote to change taxes, a simple majority vote on the budget would allow us to have a much better chance at an on-time, coherent budget each year.  It’s frustrating to do the job and do it on-time, and have the public be dissatisfied with all legislators because a minority of them block final action.  Forty-seven other states, the U.S. Congress, and every city and county adopt a budget with a simple majority.  So should the state.  We’d be better off for it.