Well, thank God that's over.
A flurry of last-minute activity failed to produce a deal on water,
earned a scaled-back version of the Senate, and the governor's, prison plan and served up some veto bait on renewable
energy.
The Merc's Denis Thierault reports, "Blowing
past a midnight deadline to pass bills that were months
in the making,
frazzled California lawmakers spent Friday night and
early Saturday
casting a flurry of votes in hopes of salvaging a legislative
session
marred by the budget debacle.
But in the end they fell short on one of the biggest
issues before them: water reform.
And
as the clock ticked away, it wasn't until nearly 6 a.m. the Legislature
sent the governor both of the other two proposals that
had emerged as
the session's signature issues — prison reform and renewable energy
mandate.
Not surprisingly, it was most ambitious of the three,
the plan to overhaul the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, that had
to be tabled late Friday after legislative leaders
said they couldn't
muster the votes to push the package through.
"We came close,"
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, said before the session
finally adjourned at 6:20 a.m., "and we came closer than we've come
since the last decade."
Well, no bonus points for that.
E.J. Schultz reports, "Late-night negotiations focused on a hastily drafted bill
for nearly
$12 billion in water bonds that voters would have to approve over two
election cycles, 2010 and 2014.
"Republicans objected to language
they said would make it more difficult to spend money
on dams, their
longtime priority. They also said provisions would
result in the money
being doled out too slowly."
Sen. Darrell Steinberg called on the governor to call
a special session on water to try to reach a deal on the
issue over the interim.
Bettina Boxall blames "partisan apprehensions " for the water deal breakdown.
"
Much of the package revolved around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
east of San Francisco, the failing heart of California's water system,
where the state's two biggest rivers converge. It is part of the
largest estuary on the West Coast, a passageway for
salmon and home to
the tiny, imperiled delta smelt. It is also the conduit for shipping water from the
north to Central Valley farms and Southern California
cities.
But the delta is on the verge of ecological collapse,
in part because
of the mammoth pumping operation that feeds the federal
and state
aqueducts. Pumping has altered the delta's hydrology and salinity
patterns and helped drive the smelt to near-extinction. The smelt's
vulnerability has spurred pumping cutbacks, reducing
water deliveries
to farms and cities, aggravating the impact of the
current drought."
Meanwhile, the gov said he would veto the legislature's plan to boost the state's renewable energy portfolio to 33 percent by the year 2020.
And, Marc Lifsher reports, he will try to boost the standard through the regulatoryprocess,
avoiding the Legislature all together.
John Howard reports a lot of the fuss was about out-of-state power generators and what qualifies as renewable
energy.
"
Hours after the legislation was approved, Gov. Schwarzenegger's handlers issued a statement listing the opponents
of the bill and their contact information -- an odd action for a governor who has repeatedly described
himself as an environmentalist -- and included more than a dozen industry and business
groups opposed to the bills. The action appeared to
signal the governor's intention to veto the legislation.
The package would
"create additional regulatory hurdles for renewable
energy development to surmount, adding new procedures
to the already-complicated (state) procurement process...," said Jan
Smutny-Jones of the Independent Energy Producers Association."
John Howard also looks at a major plan "allowing the South Coast
Air Quality Management District to resume its system
of distributing emissions credits that had been blocked
last year in the courts."
But there's more on that story to come...
So, it's over now, but we find it so hard here at the Roundup
to say goodbye. Lucky for us, then, APs Juliette Williams
says we'll all be back soon.
"Legislators already are expected to meet in special sessions Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger called to overhaul California's tax structure and
reform education."
"After a last-minute effort to make critical improvements to the
state's water delivery system failed again Friday, Senate
President Pro
Tem Darrell Steinberg said he would ask the governor
to add a special
session on water to the already long policy agenda.
"Hanging over it all is the threat of a budget deficit
the
Schwarzenegger administration has already pegged at
$7 billion to $8
billion in 2010-11, which could again divert lawmakers' attention from
the critical issues.
"What's not clear is whether legislators will feel any more
urgency
during a series of special sessions than they felt
during the regular
legislative session. It ended early Saturday with a
partisan feud in
the state Senate, where Republicans refused to provide
votes for any
bills requiring two-thirds suport"
So, was it a good year or a bad year? That depends
which end of the LA Times you ask. Eric Bailey says
the end of the legislative year left lawmakers with
"little to show for it except discontent, partisan dysfunction
and a colleague's personal disgrace."
But George Skelton thinks otherwise. "The current Legislature, regardless of Duvall and despite
ideological polarization, has had a better year than it's getting
credit for.
"Its main accomplishment was keeping the state afloat
amid a flood of red ink, created primarily by the toughest economic
times since the Great Depression. OK, so it did use
some bailing wire
and chewing gum! The bills got paid, even if briefly
with IOUs.
"With great difficulty and pain -- at least for Democrats -- the
Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger slashed
programs by roughly
$30 billion. They also struck a major blow against "auto-pilot"
spending by permanently eliminating all automatic annual
cost-of-living
adjustments, except for K-12 schools. And they summoned enough courage
to temporarily increase taxes by $12.5 billion.
"In the end, they found a way to restore health insurance
for 660,000 low-income kids."
And finally, from our You Know Your Telecom System is Bad When...Files, AP reports, "
A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them
to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country's leading internet service provider .
"Internet speed and connectivity in Africa's largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage.
It is also expensive."
This revelation led Telekom to launch a new marketing
campaign. "Telekom: At least we won't poop on your car."
