Controller John Chiang is being a bit of a drama Queen, choosing to pause before confirming that he will continue to pay the salaries and per diem payments to California’s state legislators. When voters passed Proposition 25 last year, it included a provision suspending compensation to legislators if no budget is passed by the Constitutional deadline of June 15. So to be clear, if Democrats had not passed a budget on Wednesday, legislators not be getting paid. It is certainly no accident that the language in Prop. 25 does not tie the legislative pay suspension to the enactment of a budget, just the legislature sending one to the Governor. It would be a stunning display of independence from the state’s public employee unions if Chiang were to withhold the pay of their legislative vassals.
Given that the basic issues surrounding the budget impasse had not materially changed going into the 15th (liberals want to hike taxes to balance the budget, conservatives want cuts, and a small group of moderates want to trade putting taxes on the ballot in return for reforms), and since the legislature has an unfortunate, time honored tradition of ignoring the June 15th deadline, one has to conclude that the entire purpose for Wednesday’s budget exercise was specifically about this legislative paycheck issue.
Kabuki: Traditional Japanese Theater
It is not plausible to me that there is such a level of dysfunction between Governor Brown and the legislative leadership that they would be caught completely off guard by Brown’s veto. In fact, the idea that this outcome was not expected is totally lacking in credibility. It requires a narrative that Jerry Brown is being super-secretive about his intentions. Look, I have a lot of issues with Brown, but I do give him credit for his candor. Add as a supporting point to my supposition — the situation where Senate President Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Perez sent the actual budget bills to the Governor, but not the myriad of trailer bills (or at least that seems to be the case from press accounts). There may be other reasons to explain holding those trailer bills back, but it certainly one that makes sense is that the leaders knew or at least strongly suspected that Brown would veto their sketchy budget. By retaining those trailer bills, it empowers the legislative leaders in future budget negotiations because they control those “chits” in the process. If they transmitted them to Brown, then Brown has those “chits” — wielding influence with budget players by his willingness to sign or veto individual trailer bills (something he cannot do if he doesn’t have them on his desk).
So the budget Kabuki dance continues, generally where it was before this week. All that has really happened is that the majority party went through contortions in order to may sure that legislators will continue to be paid throughout this ongoing process.
If you are a Democrat legislator reading this blog post, and are saying to yourself, “Fleischman is clueless. This was a real budget, not a faux one!” — you seriously need to go see Steinberg or Perez with a portable lie detector test and hook it up. They likely are not giving you the straight scoop. Probably because they need you to be earnest in your frustration when you are talking to the media. It means there likely was a conspiracy and you just weren’t in on it.
June 17th, 2011 at 10:04 am
This is real drama for John Chiang. Obviously the pressure to declare any bill that says “budget” to be the budget bill is enormous. And by the standards of the past decade this budget is only a couple orders of magnitude worse. But Chiang also wants to be the next State Treasurer and the Treasurer has to convince Wall Street that the state is credit worthy. If Chiang calls this a credit worthy budget his 2014 prospects will drop as fast the state’s credit rating is dropping.