"The longer California's budget impasse drags on,
the more likely public schools and welfare programs are at risk of cuts, according to educators and advocates for the poor monitoring negotiations inside the Capitol," reports the Bee's Judy Lin.
"As California enters the third week of its new fiscal year without an approved budget, advocates are hoping lawmakers stay true to their pledge of protecting the state's young learners and the needy. Democratic leaders plan to bring a new version of their spending plan up for a vote in both houses Wednesday even though Republican lawmakers are balking at the proposal for not doing enough to control an estimated $3.4 billion deficit.
"Contrary to Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nunez's pledge not to 'take the canes away from the blind' or 'kick people out of their wheelchairs,' some advocates worry that Republican pressure to control spending will force Democratic leaders to accept unpalatable cuts, including K-12 education and assistance to the poor, blind and disabled.
"The speaker denied considering such cuts but declined to detail Democratic proposals."
But not everything is grinding to a halt. Capitol Weekly's Christine Mai-Duc reports
the state has authorized the paying of some old legal bills.
"Despite being stuck in the annual lethargy that is budget negotiations, California lawmakers still found time to pay some past due legal bills.
"
The Assembly gave final passage to SB 50 by Sen. Tom Torlakson, D-Antioch, a $3.5 million appropriation authorizing the Department of Justice to pay out legal settlements to three plaintiffs who won claims against the state last year. The bill by Torlakson, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is the yearly payment measure that wraps up lawsuit-related loose ends.
"
The bulk of the money went to Calexico Hospital Management Group, which managed Calexico Hospital in the small, Southern California border town. Last year, the hospital sued the California Department of Health Services, the state regulator responsible for certifying hospitals, claiming that officials failed to conduct timely certification surveys of the site."
Meanwhile, add spouses and families to the list of frustrated budget watchers. "Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nunez ordered members of the lower house Monday to cancel vacations until the state's budget stalemate ends.
"Numerous Assembly members, including Nunez and Assembly Republican leader
Mike Villines, have had to cancel family trips because of the standoff.
"'That's OK,' said Villines, R-Clovis. 'People want us to get our work done -- and that's what I'm going to do.'
"Nunez, in an e-mail Monday, told Assembly members to stay close to the Capitol every day, including weekends, until a budget is signed.
"The crackdown also applies to flights home: Assembly members must foot the bill for their flights and be prepared to return to Sacramento within one hour if a floor session is called.
"Senate President Pro Tem
Don Perata has announced no restriction on travel."
Dan Walters
writes that the endgame is near. "The state budget is now officially a month overdue but perhaps more important for those who occupy the Capitol, it's threatening to disrupt their summer vacations -- and that may be why they may be getting serious."
"Clearly, the Capitol will have to go through the drill of proposing and defeating budgets before the process can move to the endgame, but whether that can occur quickly enough to send lawmakers out of the Capitol on Friday on their scheduled summer recess is problematic."
Meanwhile, in
Waterworld... "Acknowledging the specter of drought, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
appealed Monday for a $6-billion investment in water works, while the Democratic leader of the state Senate called for a $5-billion water bond measure on next year's ballot," reports Nancy Vogel in the Times.
"The maneuverings by the two politicians virtually ensures that voters will be asked next year to approve billions of dollars in spending for water projects -- including, perhaps, two new dams and a canal to siphon the Sacramento River.
"Cutbacks are inevitable next year if rain and snow don't fall abundantly this winter, and the dueling announcements by Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem
Don Perata (D-Oakland) kick off what are expected to be several months of wrangling to shape ballot proposals."
The Chron's Matthew Yi looks at the cause of the fight between the governor and Democrats on air rules. "The
rift between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers over how the state should fight global warming can be summed up in two numbers: 24 and two.
"Those figures represent new jobs proposed at the California Air Resources Board to carry out the governor's preferred strategy for meeting the state's ambitious goals for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
"Under Schwarzenegger's budget plan, the state would commit 24 positions to the task of creating systems such as allowing high-polluting companies to buy credits from low-polluting ones for their greenhouse gas emissions. But the Democrat-controlled Legislature has stripped that number down to two, moving the other 22 positions to focus on regulations aimed at cutting emissions, which is what Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez favors.
"The tug-of-war over how the state will implement its landmark law played into Schwarzenegger's firing this month of air board Chairman Robert Sawyer and the resignation of the agency's executive director. The governor has appointed former air board Chairwoman
Mary Nichols, who served under former Gov.
Jerry Brown, to head the board."
Edwin Garcia writes in the Merc News that
the number of parole agents hasn't kept pace with a flood of parolees. "State law authorizes a funding ratio to provide, in most cases, one parole agent for every 70 parolees. However, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has begun to implement parole reform, which has resulted in an 8.4 percent increase in the number of parolees since June 2006.
"But instead of hiring more agents, and maintaining the ratio, the state hasn't kept up with filling existing parole agent vacancies - at least 200 at last count.
"Prison officials, however, insist that despite the increase in the number of parolees, agent caseloads have actually decreased since last year because many of the new parolees require less supervision and the number of higher-risk parolees has dropped."
The AP reports Salinas mayor
Dennis Donohue has enlisted a new band of crime fighters in the effort to stop gang violence -- grandmothers. "Grandmas are being asked to help battle gangs. Mayor Dennis Donohue and Monterey Bishop
Richard Garcia want to recruit "abuelitas," Spanish for grandmothers, to help steer youngsters away from gang life.
"'My own grandmother, my mother's mother, Guadalupe, was a very influential person in my life,' Garcia said. 'Speaking to inmates in prison, I found that to be true in their own lives.'"
