Free Republic

Prop 19 went down in smoke, but the world's fifth biggest economy passed three propositions that address its yearly budget crisis. One makes it better and two make it worse, according to Bond Buyer. First, California voters passed Prop 25 to allow the legislature to pass a state budget without a 2/3 supermajority. This was the main obstacle to passing a budget this year for over 100 days past due. Arkansas and Rhode Island are the only states that still require a supermajority to pass the budget, and Rhode Island is another fiscal disaster. Second, California voters passed Prop 26...

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that the state controller has no authority to judge whether the state budget is balanced or block lawmakers' pay as he did last June. In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown. In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller...

Poll after poll has confirmed that California voters hold their Legislature in contempt. That's why the Legislature's majority Democrats have been forced into political self-flagellation to persuade – or fool – those voters into giving them more authority. We saw a lot of that two years ago when Democrats and their labor union allies sponsored Proposition 25, whose major purpose was to reduce the legislative vote requirement for budgets from two-thirds to a simple majority, thus excluding Republicans from the budget game. The sponsors included a provision they thought Legislature-hating voters might embrace – suspending salaries of lawmakers if they...

Two years ago, when unions and Democratic politicians sponsored a ballot measure to reduce the required legislative vote on the state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority, this column and others raised the possibility of ancillary mischief. Proposition 25's vote change applied not only to the budget itself, but other bills containing "appropriations related to the budget bill," known in the Capitol as "trailer bills." We pointed out that trailer bills had morphed from technical vehicles making minor adjustments in law into political Christmas trees that were often written in the dead of night and hastily enacted without their...

Last Tuesday, the Public Policy Institute of California issued a new poll that found, among other things, just 17 percent of the state's voters like the Legislature's performance. Simultaneously, the Legislature's top leaders provided another reason for Californians to harbor such scorn. Assembly Speaker John Pérez and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg announced that they would spend untold amounts of taxpayers' money on high-priced lawyers to sue state Controller John Chiang over his decision to withhold legislators' paychecks last year after they failed to enact a balanced budget. Chiang was merely enforcing a new provision of the state constitution...

When voters passed a union-backed measure last year to reduce the legislative vote on the state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority – thereby eliminating Republican leverage – skeptics said it could foster legislative mischief. Proposition 25 applied not only to the budget but "trailer bills" that the Legislature deemed necessary to implement the budget. And all budget bills would take effect immediately with a governor's signature, making any challenge via referendum legally doubtful. That legislative loophole, this column and other analysts pointed out, would make it easy to push major pieces of policy legislation through the Capitol with...

So much for the will of the people. Remember Prop 25? (Voters approved Pro 25: No budget – no pay for lawmakers.) And remember how pleased some folks where when State Controller John Chiang said he was ‘not’ going to pay lawmakers because the budget wasn’t signed and wasn't balanced? Oh.. well.. forget about all that. Lawmakers complained and so, now John Chiang’s office says basically .. Hey.. all’s well that ends well. And he’s now restoring their lost pay..

Sir Walter Scott wasn't writing about politics when he sagely observed two centuries ago, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." But he could have been – and his poetry perfectly describes the ironic consequences of two deceptive California ballot measures drafted by Democratic politicians and their allies. Last week, state Controller John Chiang invoked the intertwined provisions of the two measures, 2004's Proposition 58 and last year's Proposition 25, to cut off salaries and expense payments of state legislators because they failed to pass a balanced budget by the June 15 constitutional deadline....

By the spring of 1981, Gov. Jerry Brown's relationship with Democratic lawmakers had become so sour that the Senate leader ordered sergeants-at-arms to remove him from the chamber. Brown left before an escort was required. Thirty years later, Brown is back at the Capitol, and hostilities with members of his own party are flaring again. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said last week they were "dismayed" by Brown's historic budget veto. On Thursday, Steinberg was still in a combative mood. "Is Plan A dead?" Steinberg said when asked about Brown's budget plan. "I'll...

California's state workforce is so vast and diverse that a journalist can quickly get into trouble making blanket assertions about it.But not this time.State employees love it, love it, LOVE IT that Controller John Chiang decided a new voter-adopted law prevents him from paying legislators because they missed the June 15 deadline to pass a balanced budget. For the last few years, delayed budgets fired up talk about whether state workers would be paid full wages on time.In 2008 and again last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to hold their pay to the federal minimum wage while deadlocked budget talks...

Controller John Chiang has blocked pay for lawmakers, putting state budget negotiations into uncharted territory and upping the pressure on legislative leaders to strike a deal. Chiang rejected his own party's spending plan as insufficient to satisfy a voter-approved law requiring timely budgets. In doing so, the Democratic controller exercised unprecedented authority Tuesday, establishing a new role for his office under propositions 25 and 58 to determine whether a legislative budget is balanced. "I think it was pretty clear ... that (voters) wanted a balanced budget," Chiang said Tuesday in an interview. With a $9.6 billion deficit still lingering, lawmakers...

Controller John Chiang announced today he has blocked pay for lawmakers, rejecting his own party's spending plan as insufficient to satisfy a voter-approved law on timely budgets. In doing so, the Democratic controller is exercising unprecedented authority Tuesday, establishing a new role for his office under Propositions 25 and 58 to determine whether a legislative budget is "balanced." "My office's careful review of the recently-passed budget found components that were miscalculated, miscounted or unfinished," Chiang said in a statement. "The numbers simply did not add up, and the Legislature will forfeit their pay until a balanced budget is sent to...

Controller John Chiang, who battled former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on state worker pay, is in the middle of another wage fight.The Democrat could decide as soon as today whether to pay legislators their salary and living expenses dating back to Thursday. Under a new voter-approved law, Proposition 25, the state docks legislative pay each day lawmakers have not sent the governor a budget.We answer some common questions below: >Lawmakers passed a budget last week. What gives?Chiang determined that lawmakers must not only send the governor a budget, but a "balanced" one, as required by a separate 2004 voter-approved law. The...

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association demanded Friday that Controller John Chiang withhold pay from lawmakers and threatened to sue if he does not. The group's president, Jon Coupal, contends that lawmakers must pass a balanced budget to receive pay under voter-approved Proposition 25. He referred to a veto letter in which Gov. Jerry Brown said the Democrats' majority-vote budget was "not a balanced solution" and "not financeable." "If you pay legislators for enacting a phony budget, then you have made Proposition 25's provision prohibiting pay meaningless," Coupal wrote. "We urge you to confirm your intent to withhold pay and force...

Hours after vetoing the state budget, Gov. Jerry Brown said this afternoon that he will continue negotiating with Republican lawmakers at least until month's end. "We need four Republican votes, and in the next several days I'm going to do everything I can," Brown said at a press conference at his office in Los Angeles. "I'll move heaven and earth to get those votes." The veto was widely viewed as crucial politically to Brown, who staked his campaign and first six months in office on his promise to adopt a spending plan balanced without accounting maneuvers. To abandon that effort...

Akey factor in Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to balance the state budget is whether he and fellow Democrats could do it by themselves, or whether the votes of at least a few Republican legislators would be required. Politicians and stakeholders are consulting attorneys, but at the moment, no one appears to know for certain – in part because the sections of the state constitution involved have never been legally tested. There's no question that Brown and Democratic leaders want at least some Republican support for placing billions of dollars in income, sales and car taxes on a special election ballot...

November 3, 2010 Calif.'s Little-Noticed Prop 26 Squeaks Through in Dead of Night By COLIN SULLIVAN of Greenwire The same California voters who rejected a proposition yesterday that would have suspended the state's climate change law also approved a separate ballot referendum that could undermine how cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are implemented by changing the definition of environmental fees. Proposition 26, which passed officially early this morning, will tighten how the state constitution defines taxes and regulatory fees. It has been called the "evil twin" of Proposition 23 by environmental activists who fear it would inhibit the state's ability...

While the country made a sharp turn to the right, giving the GOP the House in a landslide, CA has moved MORE to the LEFT, if thats possible. Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown as the next Gov, with a Dem Assembly, AND Prop 25 passed, which only requires a simple majority to pass a budget. CA is doomed, and will soon fall into the Pacific. I predict CA bankruptcy before 2012. Truly a land of fruits and nuts.

Prop 19: When Worlds Collide.  NO.   If this simply allowed people to cultivate and smoke marijuana themselves and left the rest of us alone, it would be worth considering.   But it goes much further and provides that “no person shall be … discriminated against or denied any right or privilege” for pot use, inviting a lawsuit every time an employer tries to require a drug test, for example.  If you want to smoke pot in your own world, I don’t care.  But don’t bring it into mine.     Prop 20: Congressional Redistricting. YES.  This finishes the work we began in...

Proposition 19: NO – Marijuana legalization My biggest concern with this initiative, aside from the basic policy considerations, are two large unintended consequences: 1) will drug abuse grow, thus putting more of a strain on our out-of-control welfare system; 2) the impact of lawsuits on employers seeking to enforce a zero-tolerance policy (especially important in the defense industry). Proposition 20: YES – Redistricting reform extended to Congress Prop. 20 will make the independent State Commission on Redistricting re-draw Congressional Districts in 2011, instead of the legislature working with liberal interests, just as the independent commission will re-draw Legislative district boundaries...