Evan Halper and Shane Goldmacher chart the long and winding path of the budget negotiations.
"It was long into the wee hours of Friday morning, and
the state Senate
was teetering near deadlock on bills to close a $26-billion budget
deficit when lobbyists for the software company Intuit approached
Senate leader Darrell Steinberg.
"For several years, lobbyists
for the company had been trying to kill a state program
that allows
some California residents, mostly low-income taxpayers, to have the
state tax board fill out their tax returns for free
-- competition for
Intuit's popular TurboTax software.
"Term limits have made this batch of lawmakers among
the most
inexperienced in decades, and many legislators, their
attention focused
on their next elected office, spent the night watching
the moves of
real or prospective opponents in upcoming primaries.
In the past, legislative leaders such as Democrats
Willie Brown and
John Burton and Republican Jim Brulte had considerably
more leverage
over members. Today's leaders, however, are termed out before they can
consolidate power.
As a result, they routinely turn to one of
the few weapons they have left: sleep deprivation. Overnight lockdown
sessions are becoming the norm with budgets. Meetings
start before
bills have been vetted by the Legislature's legal staff, leaving
lawmakers to wait in the dead of night to see the specific
language
they are being asked to vote on."
Count George Skelton among those who's had it with late-night budget sessions.
Here's another Sacramento reform for the long "to do" list -- one that
wouldn't require a vote of the people or even the governor's signature.
Prohibit the Legislature from voting on any bill after
sunset. No exceptions -- and especially not a budget bill.
That's a reform the Legislature could enact itself and clearly
should.
Knock off these incessant all-nighters that increasingly have become a
mainstay of the Sacramento playbook. They look juvenile
and, I suspect,
heap more public ridicule on the once-proud institution.
Worse, the no-slumber parties often result in rushed, reckless lawmaking.
"One can only imagine the glitches and screw-ups hidden in the
roughly 30 bills the Legislature passed in its sleepless stupor
over a
20-hour period that began about 7 p.m. Thursday and didn't conclude
until the Assembly shut down around 3 p.m. Friday. The Senate had
adjourned at 6:30 a.m. as sunlight began flooding the Capitol, jarring
lawmakers back into the real world."
Luckily for us, nobody's read them to check...
AP's Steve Lawrence reports we could all be doing this again sooner than anyone would like.
"California officials are warily awaiting the next round of state revenue figures, concerned that their latest budget-balancing efforts may not be enough to end a seemingly endless stream of deficits.
Lawmakers wrapped up a nearly 24-hour session Friday afternoon by approving most of a complicated package of spending cuts, raids on local government funds and accounting maneuvers designed to eliminate a $26 billion budget shortfall.
But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders said they might have to deal with more red ink in a few months if the state's economy doesn't turn around.
"We are still in troubled waters; there are still uncertainties," the Republican governor said. "We don't know how much longer our revenues will drop. We don't know if we may not be back in the next six months to make further cuts."
Funny he sounds like he knows exactly that they'll be back again in six months...
Meanwhile, we'll wait for the verdict from Wall St.
The Chron's Matthew Yi checks in from a meeting of Can-Kickers Annonymous.
California may be about to crawl out of a fiscal crevasse now that the Legislature has adopted a $23 billion deficit-reduction plan, but the state is headed toward another deep hole even if the economy recovers , finance experts say."
"Next year's budget will start with a very large shortfall even if there's a good recovery," said Steve Levy, a senior economist at the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.
John Myers had a budget hangover of his own.
"In the same way you'd clean up the beer bottles, empty the trash, and try to piece together what you remember after a raucous bash, it's worth sifting through the deal making, the politics involved, and maybe a few of the lasting impressions that culminated with the events of the 20-plus hours between Thursday evening and Friday afternoon.
But as bad, and surreal as things got last week, they never got quite this bad.
"A stray snake brought parliament to a standstill for several hours on Thursday in India's Orissa state, officials said."
Rumor is the snake's name was HUTA. But, moving on...
"A cleaner spotted the intruder, believed to be a king cobra , while sweeping in the morning and called the assembly's watchman.
The speaker of the assembly in the state capital Bhubaneswar adjourned the house as security personnel, wildlife officials and a member of a local snake helpline searched unsuccessfully for the creature with the help of a sniffer dog.
We can imagine what Tony Mendoza's Twitter page would have looked like if that happened here.
