Editorial/Riverside Press Enterprise

October 19, 2005

There is no reason that local governments should foot the bill for the statewide special election on Nov. 8. That balloting is projected to cost Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California nearly $1 million combined, county officials say.

Yet many state legislators are unsympathetic. "The governor should find the money to pay for it himself since it's his idea," state Sen. Nell Soto, D-Pomona, told The Press-Enterprise on Friday. "I really think that (the governor) should be a little bit more considerate of the expenditures the local governments have."

Sounds to us like Soto is willing to let counties suffer to punish a political opponent.

Yes, the special election was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's idea. And Democrats in Sacramento correctly saw the campaign as a challenge to their power and to the clout of labor unions, perhaps Democrats' most lucrative campaign constituency.

But none of that is an excuse for sticking counties an innocent party in the war between Schwarzenegger and legislative Democrats with the bill for a state election.

Sure, this would not be the first special election that the state has refused to fund. The Legislature in 2003 stiffed counties for the balloting that knocked Gray Davis out of office and brought in Schwarzenegger. It was wrong to let counties take the hit then, just as it is wrong now.

Unions, teachers, firefighters, nurses maybe even dog catchers are already furious at Schwarzenegger, spending millions on television ads to persuade the public to share their rage. Encouraging county governments to join the anti-Arnold brigade may seem like smart politics.

But Californians who wonder why their local budgets are socked for a state expense should not buy the simplistic explanation that the governor alone is to blame. In fact, voters might do well to note that this kind of partisan intransigence is the very reason Schwarzenegger is pushing his reform initiatives in the first place.