GOP senators push reforms, decline to specify cuts

Sacramento Bee ^ | 5/20/9 | Susan Ferriss

[SmithL]

Just hours before budget negotiations begin at the Capitol, Republican state senators declined to specify today what big-ticket costs they favor chopping to solve a massive $21.3 billion deficit.

Instead, gathered at a press conference outside the Capitol, the senators said the collapse of all but one ballot proposition Tuesday was a green light for long-range plans to cut public spending in the future. They unveiled a series of reform ideas to change school spending and hold state bureaucracies accountable for performance by imposing "term limits" on them or requiring them to "prove their worth" to be funded.

"Solving the latest budget crisis does nothing to solve the underlying disease," said the Senate Republican leader Dennis Hollingsworth of Murrieta.

Hollingsworth will be attending the so-called Big Five leadership meeting behind closed doors this afternoon with Democratic majority leaders, GOP leaders in the Assembly and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The GOP Senate leader said the first proposal he will put on the table is to allow more public access to budget talks, but he didn't elaborate on how.

"The spending cuts are going to come from the governor's proposals," Hollingsworth said. "We need to go through his proposal with a fine-tooth comb."