Posted on 02/17/2004 4:24:43 PM PST by calcowgirl
SACRAMENTO – An initiative on the March 2 ballot would allow Democrats, who have held large legislative majorities in recent years, to pass state budgets and tax increases without getting a single Republican vote.
Proposition 56 has been overshadowed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's drive for two other budget-related measures, a $15 billion fiscal-recovery bond in Proposition 57 and a companion balanced-budget amendment in Proposition 58.
The proposal to lower the requirement for passing a state budget and increasing taxes from a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to 55 percent could result in a dramatic long-term power shift between the two political parties.
Under the current partisan makeup of the Legislature, which is not expected to change much this decade with the safe districts drawn for each party, Republicans no longer would have to provide at least two votes in the Senate and six votes in the Assembly for any budget and tax increase.
Democrats would have enough votes of their own to obtain a 55 percent vote in the 40-member Senate and the 80-member Assembly, with a margin ample enough to have several Democratic votes to spare in each house.
"Proposition 56 was created simply because you had one-party control, but they never could get a two-thirds vote," said Assembly GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
In the campaigns for and against Proposition 56, neither side mentions that the main point of the initiative is to bypass Republicans, who have made opposition to tax increases their main budget issue in recent years.
The initiative is packaged by its sponsors, mainly public-employee unions, as a reform plan to end deadlocks by cutting the pay of legislators when the budget is late, requiring Internet access to budget votes by legislators, and creating a "rainy-day" reserve fund.
Early television ads for Proposition 56 say the measure "ends the partisan gridlock, changing to 55 the percentage needed to pass a budget." The ads do not say that the measure also would lower the requirement for passing tax increases to 55 percent.
A statewide Field Poll last fall showed the importance of the changes proposed in the measure, in addition to the voting percentage. When all of the provisions are described, the initiative was supported 61 percent to 25 percent. When only told of the provision lowering the requirement for passing a budget, the initiative trailed 44 percent to 38 percent.
The campaign against Proposition 56, financed mainly by business interests that could be affected by tax increases, does not mention the various changes beyond the voting percentage and refers broadly to "politicians," not the battle between Democrats and Republicans for control of the Legislature.
"Proposition 56 would make it easier for the politicians to raise our taxes," said a No on Proposition 56 campaign mailer.
Minority Republicans enjoy political power beyond their numbers because California is one of only a few states that require more than a majority vote of the Legislature to pass a budget and increase taxes.
The requirement for a supermajority vote to pass the budget, dating to 1933, is shared by two small states, Rhode Island at two-thirds and Arkansas, where the requirement is a three-quarters vote.
California's requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass a state tax increase is more recent, about 25 years old, and was part of the sweeping changes imposed by the landmark Proposition 13 property-tax cut in 1978.
Fifteen other states require more than a majority vote of the Legislature to increase taxes, ranging from three-fifths to three-quarters, said Arturo Perez of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver.
The only other state besides California that routinely has lengthy budget deadlocks going beyond the beginning of the new fiscal year is New York, where budgets and tax increases can be passed by a majority vote.
In New York, control of the two legislative houses has been split between the two parties for decades, with Republicans having a majority in the Senate and Democrats holding the Assembly.
The state budget in New York was an average of 76 days late from 1995 to 2003, compared with an average of 32 days late for the California budget, according to a report for the Citizens Budget Conference in New York by Gerald Benjamin of the State University of New York at New Paltz.
In recent years, California Republican legislators have opposed all tax increases. Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga, threatened to campaign against any Republican legislator who voted for a tax increase last year.
Senate President Pro Tempore John Burton, D-San Francisco, who was first elected to the Legislature 40 years ago and then returned two decades later after serving in Congress, said he can remember when Republicans would vote for a tax increase if necessary.
"Now it's like, 'I won't vote for a tax,' " Burton said of Republicans. " 'I won't vote for a fee, and if I do I'll quit.' "
Schwarzenegger opposes a tax increase, even though tax increases were used by all three of his Republican predecessors – former governors Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson – to deal with inherited deficits during their first year in office.
A Field Poll last month found that 59 percent of California voters think a tax increase will be part of the solution to the state's current budget deficit. The voters favored a temporary tax increase on upper-income earners or a half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax increase.
Budgets in recent years have been passed with votes from most of the Democrats joined by a handful of Republicans, who sometimes insist on funding for specific items before they agree to vote for the spending plan.
Four Assembly Republicans who broke ranks and voted for the budget in 2001, after receiving funding for projects in their districts, paid a political price. Two did not run for re-election, and two were defeated in GOP primaries as they ran for the state Senate and Congress.
A Republican analyst, Tony Quinn, has suggested that Proposition 56 might have a consequence unintended by its sponsors, as the initiative was being drawn up before Schwarzenegger replaced Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, in the October recall election.
Passage of the initiative would reduce the number of Democratic votes that Schwarzenegger would need for his budget plan if all of the Republicans back the governor's proposal.
"That's not going to happen," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles. "I think what you will see, most likely, is the 48 Democrats will make an alliance with the governor and whatever Republican votes are necessary."
Last summer, red-eyed legislators sat through an all-night session as Assembly Republicans met one by one with Assembly Democratic leaders to cut deals that would get the handful of GOP votes needed to pass an overdue budget.
Assembly Republicans had no agreement with the Senate, and the funding they sought for suburban schools, rural sheriffs, small-airport security and other programs did not make it through the upper house.
What more need be said?
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