http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget17-2009feb17,0,1851008.story?page=2
From the Los Angeles Times
Legislature adjourns with no budget; governor prepares to lay off
10,000
In addition to shutting down public-works projects,
Schwarzenegger administration moves toward massive state layoffs as legislators
again fail to garner the final GOP vote needed to pass a budget.
By Jordan
Rau and Eric Bailey
February 17, 2009Reporting from Sacramento —
With lawmakers still unable to deliver a budget after three days of intense
negotiations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared to lay off 10,000 government
workers and his administration said it would halt the last 275 state-funded
public works projects still in operation.
The projects, which cost $3.8
billion and include upgrades to 18 bridges and roads in Los Angeles County to
protect them from collapsing in earthquakes, had been allowed to continue as
others were suspended because the state was running out of cash.
The
projects to be suspended today had been exempted from a November stop order
because of the significant financial cost of canceling contracts, the expense of
resuming them or the public-health or public-safety ramifications. The list also
includes work to eliminate arsenic in the Central Valley town of Live Oak and
half-built highway construction projects.
Schwarzenegger had delayed
sending out pink slips since Friday, hoping that lawmakers would soon approve a
budget. But they failed Monday to find a third GOP vote in the state Senate to
achieve the two-thirds majority needed to pass a budget -- a requirement that
essentially gives the minority Republicans veto power. A spokesman for
Schwarzenegger said layoff notices would go out today.
Late Monday
evening, both houses of the Legislature adjourned and Senate President Pro Tem
Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) ordered senators back to the chamber at 10 a.m.
today, saying they would stay until a budget passed.
"Bring a
toothbrush," he said. "I will not allow anyone to go home to resume their lives
or any kind of normal business."
State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa
Maria) was viewed as the most likely candidate to provide the final vote, but by
Monday evening legislative leaders had not agreed to his demands. The dominant
Democrats need three Republican votes in each house to pass the budget; leaders
in the Assembly said the votes were available in the lower house.
Assemblyman Mike Villines of Clovis and Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto,
the two GOP leaders in the Legislature, told their members last week that the
deal they helped forge was the strongest Republicans could get. But most GOP
lawmakers have taken an antitax pledge, and the package relies on $14.4 billion
in tax hikes to plug a nearly $42-billion budget hole.
The challenge of
rounding up the handful of Republican votes has shown how strong the resistance
to taxes remains in California politics.
In the Assembly, Republicans
Roger Niello of Fair Oaks and Anthony Adams of Hesperia have agreed to join
Villines in supporting the higher sales, income and gas taxes that are part of
the package, legislators said. The move carries significant political risk.
Niello, who worked in his family's Sacramento County auto dealership
before entering politics, will be forced from the Assembly next year by term
limits. He is seeking to run for one of the most conservative state Senate
districts, and faces a primary against a fellow assemblyman who would
undoubtedly bludgeon Niello as being in favor of taxes.
Niello refused to
publicly commit his vote, saying simply that it "will be based on the total
package -- and right now, not all the details are nailed down."
Legislative leaders said Niello agreed to support the package because he
is the senior Republican on the Assembly budget panel. By political custom,
lawmakers in such positions vote for budgets that their leaders
recommend.
Adams, a bearded 37-year-old who was elected in 2006 after
working for San Bernardino County as its legislative liaison to Sacramento and
Washington, has said he would provide the Assembly's third GOP
vote.
"It's unconscionable that we let this state go over the cliff,"
Adams said in an interview. "My job is to get the best possible deal for
Republicans."
Adams faces reelection next year, and his support for the
budget package has antitax advocates interested in lining up a challenger in the
GOP primary. And because he represents a swing district, Adams must also worry
about a general-election challenge from a Democrat.Adams said he had not asked
for specific concessions for his vote, or for assurances that he would get
assistance to fend off election challenges.
"I'm not trying to find some
soft landing," he said, "although my wife is going to kill me if she hears
that."
The political repercussions for Villines are the least
intimidating. A gregarious former Capitol staffer and public relations man, he
easily brushed back a weekend attempt to topple him as leader of the Assembly's
29 Republicans. He is in his last term in the Assembly, and the state Senate and
Congress seats he may be eyeing are held by incumbents with no immediate plans
to vacate them.
Like Cogdill, his Senate counterpart, Villines has argued
that Republicans extracted substantial concessions as they negotiated the budget
package. Those include $15.1 billion in cuts to government services, tax breaks
for corporations and a greater role for private contractors in state building
projects.
The GOP leaders also won agreement from Democrats to place on
the May 19 ballot a measure to limit future lawmakers from splurging the next
time the state's treasury becomes plump, as they did during the dot-com and
housing booms.
Cogdill, a taciturn former real estate appraiser from a
conservative Central Valley area, has had difficulty winning over two of the
other 14 GOP senators. That small caucus has gone through repeated internal
power battles in recent years, and the ambitions of some of its members toward
statewide offices has made it hard to find volunteers to break the party's
antitax mantra.
"The Senate is just a bit more independently minded than
the Assembly," said Kevin Eckery, a former press secretary for then-Gov. Pete
Wilson, who like Schwarzenegger reluctantly agreed to raise taxes. "These are
guys who, given their own set of personal convictions, just cannot justify a
large tax increase during the worst recession in 35 years."
GOP Sen. Roy
Ashburn of Bakersfield has agreed to vote for the package, according to
legislative officials. This is Ashburn's last term in the Legislature, so he
does not have to worry about reelection. And he has voted for tax increases
before, during his 12 years as a Kern County supervisor.
Ashburn wrangled
from legislative leaders a new tax credit intended to help home builders. It
would allow people buying newly constructed homes a state tax credit of 5% of
the purchase price or $10,000, whichever is lower. The credit would be spread
over three tax years and be given out on a first-come basis until the state had
parted with $100 million.
Ashburn declined Monday to confirm that he
would vote for the budget package but said the state was in "an extraordinarily
difficult situation" and "there are no easy answers."
Leaders had
initially wooed Sen. Dave Cox of Fair Oaks as the final Republican vote. He had
publicly declared, as recently as last week, "We cannot close this budget gap
with cuts alone."
At 70 years old and in his last term, he presumably
does not have to worry about political retribution. And his district includes
sections of Sacramento, where many state workers face the prospect of layoffs.
But Cox announced Saturday that he would not vote for the package, and
negotiators turned much of their attention to Maldonado. The GOP's only Latino
senator, Maldonado, like Adams, represents a swing district and voted for the
state budget in 2007.
On Monday, Maldonado said he would "take a look at"
voting for the budget package if it included financial penalties for future
legislators who fail to pass state budgets on time or drive the state into
deficit. And Maldonado, who lost a 2006 bid for state controller to a more
conservative challenger, said he wants future California primary elections to be
"open," allowing voters to cross party lines to cast a ballot.
Though
widely believed to want to run again for statewide office, Maldonado said in an
interview: "An open primary is for the people of California, it's not for me. I
don't want anything in this budget that's for me. I'm not for sale."
jordan.rau@latimes.comeric.bailey@latimes.comTimes
staff writer Michael Rothfeld contributed to this report.