Today's budget impasse impact is brought to you by small business. The Bee's Dale Kasler reports: "The impasse over the proposed $103 billion general fund budget
is affecting scores of Sacramento-area businesses -- computer consultants, fuel suppliers, medical-supply firms and more -- especially those that derive much of their income from state government. In a few cases, they're laying off employees and struggling to keep their creditors at bay until the budget is passed. A few are borrowing money grudgingly, aware that the state will pay interest on late payments only to "certified" small businesses.
"'
Our cash flow just went to zip,' said
Fred Rhodes, whose Galt company supplies water-softening salts to state prisons.
"The state, practically his only customer, owes Rhodes Consolidated Inc. some $22,000, and Rhodes said he was forced to skip his house payment and drop his personal health insurance.
"He said he'll be able to borrow money to stay afloat but added, 'My concern at this point is, there's no end in sight.'
"The longest budget delay on record came in 2002, when the impasse lasted two months. The budget is due when the new fiscal year begins July 1."
"Some of the Bay Area's worst
roads may not be patched in time for winter as a result of the 41-day-old state budget impasse, county officials said Thursday," writes Tom Chorneau in the Chron.
"With payments from gas taxes and transportation bond funds on hold, road managers in San Mateo, Sonoma and Contra Costa counties are carefully spending what little money they have left, as the budget stalemate appears likely to run through August.
"Even if the budget is resolved sooner, officials said, valuable time has been lost during the critical summer construction season - so much so that some road repairs may have to be put off until next spring.
"'The longer the state budget drags out, the more we are going to be in a position of missing construction time and in danger of hitting the winter season,' said
Paul McIntosh, executive director of the California State Association of Counties.
"'This is a very big deal, because potholes and decaying roads are very visible to our citizens,' he said. 'People want to know what's going on.'"
Dan Walters writes that Democratic leadership
have little to force Republican hands. "[
Fabian] Núñez and [
Don] Perata may say they won't negotiate further, but they have almost no capacity to force Republicans to budge, given their safe districts and their lack of personal stakes in the budget's details. Perata's declaration that he won't take up other legislation until the budget is passed is music to Republican ears since the legislation is, for the most part, being carried by liberal Democrats. And were Núñez to make good on his budget threat, it would widen the deficit even more.
"It brings to mind the old saying about the most dangerous person being the one without anything to lose."
In fact, Brian Joseph writes the very Senators who are holding up the budget
may actually have something to gain from the delay. "Those same fiscal conservatives, however, will pocket extra state money precisely because they've held up the state budget.
"Records indicate that since July 21, when the Senate was scheduled to go on vacation, Senate Republicans have racked up at least $7,100 in per diem payments – cash they wouldn't have been eligible for if the Senate had just passed the budget and went on break as planned.
"For most of the year, senators and Assembly members are eligible to receive $162 per day on top of their annual base salary, which rises from $113,000 to $116,000 in December. This "desk" per diem, as it's called, is designed to cover the cost of keeping a second home in Sacramento. Unless lawmakers have an unexcused absence, they typically receive it every day the Legislature works.
"So when lawmakers are on break, they don't receive the extra bucks. Assembly members' desk per diems stopped when they went on recess after passing a budget on July 20.
The Senate, however, can't go on break until it passes a budget – which means senators are still eligible for the per diem."
"The battle over a major expansion of Indian gambling
is now pitting tribes against tribes," reports Peter Hecht in the Bee.
"Two tribes in Placer and San Diego counties announced Thursday that they will donate up to $1 million toward a petition drive for a state referendum seeking to bar four Southern California tribes from adding 17,000 new slot machines.
"Attorney
Howard Dickstein said the United Auburn Indian Community and the Pala Band of Mission Indians
will contribute $500,000 each to a campaign committee -- California Indian Tribes for Fair Play -- that will support the signature gathering.
"United Auburn operates the Thunder Valley casino near Sacramento -- one of the state's most successful gambling facilities. Pala runs the Pala Casino Spa & Resort in northern San Diego County, a competitor to the tribes seeking casino expansions."
"Phone and energy companies and officials with business before the California Public Utilities Commission and its chairman,
Michael Peevey,
are helping underwrite the state Senate campaign of Peevey's wife,
Carol Liu," reports Jordan Rau in the Times.
Industries regulated by the commission have given $88,783 to assist Liu's 2008 bid to represent a district stretching from the San Gabriel to the San Fernando valleys. The donations, made by companies, executives, trade and employee groups, subcontractors and lawyers, make up 26% of the money Liu has raised so far.
A number of Liu's utility contributors have received favorable decisions from the body that regulates them during Peevey's tenure. Others have pending business."
The article cites contributions from Sempra and Calpine.
"'It is quite apparent that Ms. Liu's connection to Mike Peevey has opened a large number of fundraising doors,' said
Michael Shames, executive director of Utility Consumers' Action Network, a San Diego-based advocacy group. 'My concern is that the regulated companies' eagerness to give money to Ms. Liu may be based upon those companies' efforts to gain access to and favoritism from her husband.'"
Speaking of the PUC, "[a]lready a national leader in energy conservation, California
is poised to pass a groundbreaking rule that would pay utility companies to cut energy use," writes Sarah Jane Tribble in the Merc News.
"The California Public Utilities Commission late Thursday unveiled a proposal to create financial incentives for utilities such as PG&E to get their customers to use less power, with the threat of big fines if they do not. The plan would help meet the aggressive targets of the state's landmark global-warming law passed last year, which calls for drastic cuts in the amount of carbon emissions Californians produce.
"This is one of the most important regulations on utility efficiency in history," said Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. "In California, it's the culmination of a whole host of steps to provide efficiency leadership, but it's precedent-setting for the nation."
"Opponents say California, which has some of the highest electricity rates in the nation, already is spending enough money to cut energy consumption."
"Corrections officials
have proposed a slight easing of the state's media policy in the prisons that would allow reporters to bring pens, pencils and notebooks into interviews with specific inmates.
"The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation unveiled the new regulations last Friday. They represented the first changes to the controversial media policy the agency adopted in 1995 under former Gov. Pete Wilson that restricted reporters' access. The Wilson policy was designed to reduce some crime victims' anguish resulting from media profiles of notorious criminals.
"Corrections spokesman
Seth Unger said the rules are mostly designed to make official the media practices that have emerged in the prisons during the past 12 years. During that time, reporters have been allowed to interview specific inmates through the prisons' visiting process, even with the tools of their trade on occasion, despite the restrictions that ostensibly barred them."
The AP reports
the Central Valley town of Arvin has earned some unwanted attention.
"Lying in a rich agricultural region dotted with vineyards and orange groves, this central California community seems an unlikely place for a dubious distinction:
the most polluted air in America.
Hemmed in by mountains, Arvin is the final destination for pollutants from cities as far away as San Francisco Bay, and its wheezing residents are paying the price. Many of them complain that the air smells toxic."
Meanwhile, finance director
Mike Genest writes in to the Modesto Bee to
turn the heat up on GOP holdout Jeff Denham. "It's difficult to take issue with a man who was kind enough to buy me
a fine glass of Booker's Bourbon on the night of Gov. Schwarzenegger's inaugural. But I must take exception with Sen. Jeff Denham's comments in his op-ed," Genest writes. And he points out, "
Five Senate Republicans, including Denham, voted in favor of last year's budget -- which increased state spending by 9.3percent and had a budget reserve of $2 billion. Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman, who joined Denham in voting for that budget, said: "This budget does meet a lot of Republican priorities in paying the down the debt, increasing the reserve, taking care of education and taking care of law enforcement. We think it is a good balance for the state of California."
And we have an update on
the Orange County Register's on-camera nose picker, courtesy of LA Observed. "There's no question that CP Smith, A1 editor of the Orange County Register,
was caught on camera picking his nose behind a TV set in the newsroom. Also no dispute that KOCE's news director complained and threatened the Register with reprisals, after being told it wasn't the first time Smith had been disruptive. But the Register's top editor,
Ken Brusic, says in a note to the staff that it got blown out of proportion — starting here at LA Observed — and was
an accident, rather than any kind of protest. Brusic calls it a case of "drive-by journalism" by LAO and others and says Smith is embarrassed and angry by the attention, and that his buyout is unrelated.