Continuing a longstanding bipartisan tradition, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra came

Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, is sponsoring a measure to repeal the fuel tax and vehicle fee hikes approved this spring. The description given to Allen’s proposal by Becerra’s office didn’t mention taxes or fees. Instead, it said the measure “eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”

Allen’s lawyers said the description was fundamentally deceptive. Last week, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy M. Frawley agreed: “The Attorney General’s title and summary … must be changed to avoid misleading the voters and creating prejudice against the measure,” he wrote.

The revision Frawley ordered: “Repeals recently enacted gas and diesel taxes and vehicle registration fees. Eliminates road repair and transportation programs funded by these taxes and fees.”

The perception of attorneys general using ballot language to manipulate voters has been common for decades.

When Becerra’s predecessor, fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, was attorney general before her election in November to the U.S. Senate, Republicans alleged she was particularly ready to put her thumb on the scale. The ballot description for 2016’s successful Proposition 58 made it seem as if it reinforced English-learning standards in state public schools when its primary intent was to repeal mandatory English-only immersion programs required by 1998’s Proposition 227. In 2015, Harris was trashed by the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board for effectively killing pension reform measures with what the board called ballot descriptions that sounded like “union talking points.”

When Gov. Jerry Brown was attorney general before Harris, his office also courted controversy. Two of his ballot descriptions were castigated by state judges in the same week in August 2010.

One was for Proposition 23, an unsuccessful measure which would have suspended implementation of state climate-change pollution rules. The initial ballot language was condemned as prejudicial and misleading by Frawley, the same judge who recently ruled against Becerra.

Two days after Frawley’s ruling, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette rejected ballot language for Proposition 25. The successful ballot measure’s key change was to allow the state Legislature to approve a state budget on a simple majority vote. The ballot language Brown approved made it appear as if the measure’s main intent was to reinforce the requirement that the Legislature could only approve tax increases on a two-thirds vote of both the Assembly and the Senate.

Republican attorneys general also accused of voter manipulation

But in the 20th century, when it wasn’t unusual to have Republicans holding statewide office in California, GOP attorneys general drew fire as well for their perceived ballot language machinations.

The most famous example was in 1978, when California voters approved Proposition 13 to put sharp limits on how much property taxes could increase annually. Neither the ballot title or summary approved by GOP Attorney General Evelle Younger mentioned that it also would raise the threshold for raising taxes in the Legislature to a two-thirds vote.

In 1996, Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren also drew fire over the ballot language he approved for Proposition 209, a successful measure limiting the use of racial preferences by state government. In 2012, Chronicle editorial page editor John Diaz revisited criticism first made in 1996, arguing that Lungren used “loaded words” to sell opposition to affirmative action.

After more than a century in California’s political spotlight, the state’s initiative process will be getting a major revise next year. Even more surprising, both Democrats and Republicans in the famously partisan Legislature are happy to see it happen.

While Republicans made up most of the limited opposition when SB1253 made its way through the Legislature, the two GOP leaders, state Sen. Bob Huff of Diamond Bar (Los Angeles County) and Assembly member Kristin Olsen of Modesto, both voted “aye.”

“It was a bipartisan effort,” said former state Sen. Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, the Democrat who authored the bill. “People like the initiative process but believe it can be improved.”

The measure opens the way for increased collaboration between lawmakers and backers of initiatives by requiring the Legislature to hold a joint public hearing on a proposed initiative as soon as 25 percent of the required signatures are collected. It also calls for the attorney general to open a 30-day public review before approving an initiative for circulation and lets supporters amend the initiative during that time.

A much-bigger problem: Slanted ballot language

These reforms make sense and should lean to cleaner ballot measures.  But if one looks back over the past 15 years, all of the biggest outrages in the initiative process involved another problem that the Legislature declined to try to fix: the extraordinary way that the last three attorneys general — Bill Lockyer, Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris — have slanted ballot language to achieve the outcome that Democratic special interests prefer.

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s bid to use a 2005 special election to force through major reforms was hurt badly by Lockyer’s ballot titles and language. Proposition 76 would have created a rainy-day fund and a less chaotic budget process. Lockyer made it sound like an attempt to hurt school kids, titling it “State Spending and School Funding Limits. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.”

In one week alone in 2010, then-Attorney General Jerry Brown had his ballot language thrown out by judges who agreed that Brown wasn’t playing fair on a ballot measure challenging AB 32 and one making it easier to pass a state budget without Republican votes. (He tried to sabotage the first one, Prop. 23, and promote the second one, Prop. 25.)

Kamala Harris has continued this unfortunate tradition. This CalWatchdog post looks at her attempt to help trial lawyers with their misleading 2014 ballot measure.

Lockyer, Brown and Harris all say they don’t draft the language; instead, they depict it as a chore that they leave to their “professional staffs.” But if that were the case, then why have all three AGs opposed reforms transferring ballot-language responsibilities to the FPPC, the LAO or a panel of retired judges?

Because they know being able to compose ballot language on measures digging with the biggest issues of the day gives the California attorney general extraordinary power.

The worst ballot-language abuser of all

But the twist to all this is that the single worst abuser of the privilege of writing ballot descriptions was the Legislature itself. In 2008, Democrats in the Assembly and Senate directly wrote the highly misleading title and summary for Proposition 1A, the measure which provided $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the bullet-train project. Here’s the summary:

SAFE, RELIABLE HIGH-SPEED PASSENGER TRAIN BOND ACT. To provide Californians a safe, convenient, affordable, and reliable alternative to driving and high gas prices; to provide good-paying jobs and improve California’s economy while reducing air pollution, global warming greenhouse gases, and our dependence on foreign oil, shall $9.95 billion in bonds be issued to establish a clean, efficient high-speed train service linking Southern California, the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valley, and the San Francisco Bay Area, with at least 90 percent of bond funds spent for specific projects, with federal and private matching funds required, and all bond funds subject to independent audits?'”

This prompted a Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association lawsuit. That suit led a state appellate court to issue a jaw-dropping decision that forever banned the Legislature from writing ballot language.

By John Seiler

I like Steve Maviglio, the longtime Democratic and union activist and spokesperson, because he summarizes what those he represents are thinking. So it’s worth reading what he says on the the legislative vote for AB 1500, a tax increase, a bill my colleague Katy Grimes wrote about yesterday.

It needed two non-Democratic votes to pass in the Assembly because it’s a tax increase. One came from Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, I-San Diego, who bolted the Republican Party earlier this year; the other came from Assemblyman Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert. After the vote, Nestande quit his post as chairman of the Republican Caucus.

Maviglio:

“And while Nestande hasn’t left the Caucus yet, some, such as San Diego Union Tribune capital reporter Mike Gardner, are speculating that he might join fellow San Diego Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher as the second member of the Republican Caucus driven from its ranks by Conway.”

In fact, as my colleague Steven Greenhut detailed, Fletcher left in a hissy fit because the party didn’t endorse his candidacy for mayor of San Diego, a race he lost on June 5.

As to Nestande, I could be wrong, but I doubt he’ll leave the party. His father, Bruce Nestande, was a longtime Republican assemblyman and Orange County supervisor.

“What was Nestande’s crime? Supporting legislation by Assembly Speaker John Perez to close a tax loophole for out-of-state corporations and use that revenue to fund scholarships for low- and middle-class kids who want to go to college.”

If we’re going to raise taxes, why isn’t the money being used to close the state’s $16 billion budget deficit? Why new spending?

University presidents

And as to high tuition, how about cutting the massive pay and perks enjoyed by university presidents, as we have detailed here on CalWatchDog.com? Do they really need salaries of $400,000-plus a year for these fat cat academic timeservers?

And by the way, how about pension reform for all state and local government workers to save money to cut tuition costs?

The 2009 tax cut wasn’t a “loophole,” but a tax break given to multistate corporations that do business here. Although these corporations are headquartered out of state, to pay the tax they have to do business here — so in that sense they’re also California companies.

Raising their taxes will just encourage these multistate companies to do business elsewhere. Moreover, this tax increase might not have been as onerous if the money raised had cut taxes elsewhere, such as on capital gains to prompt more investment in jobs and business creation. But no, the $1.2 billion estimated from the tax increase will be spent.

California companies

“Despite the fact that not a single California company will see its taxes raised nor that it won’t raise the tax of any individual in California, Conway apparently thought that helping the Speaker achieve a meaningful reform was bad for the Republicans.”

Again, although these multistate companies are not headquartered here, they’re still “California companies” because they do business here — unless they get so disgusted they leave. A really bad part of this tax increase is that it means companies will have to deal with three different tax regimes in six years (2008 to 2013). That causes uncertainty and increases costs for accountants and tax lawyers.

“Remember though that Nestande’s vote wasn’t anything radical. In fact, the California Business Roundtable issued a statement after the vote praising the San Diego Assemblyman for reaching across the aisle to support the Speaker’s bill.”

Well, in Democrat-dominated state, it’s not surprising that business groups sometimes sell out to their imperial masters.

“But Conway would have none of that. Her pledge to obstruction apparently even trumps the goals of the Republican business community — which used to be the backbone of the party. Now Conway kowtows to the Tea Party instead.”

I’m sure Steve has noticed how “the Republican business community” has been eager to throw the best interests of the state under the bus when convenient. Look at those great Republican business leaders Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman. The Tea Party isn’t percolating all that much in California, but it gives the party its only remaining caffeination.

Obstruction

“But Conway would have none of that. Her pledge to obstruction apparently even trumps the goals of the Republican business community — which used to be the backbone of the party. Now Conway kowtows to the Tea Party instead.”

But with the passage of Proposition 25, which dropped to a majority from two-thirds the threshold for passing a budget, Republicans already are irrelevant except on one thing — raising taxes, which still requires a two-thirds vote to pass. So Democratic activist Maviglio is urging Republicans to cave on the one remaining principle they have to power to uphold.

Of course, in the end the demographics are leaning way against Republicans. Immigrants tend to vote 70 percent Democratic. And following the pattern of the past 20 years, Republicans continue to flee California’s toxic jobs and business climate for states with more freedom, such as Arizona.

Democrats now run everything. And they’re going to take the blame as, to paraphrase the late Californian Jim Morrison of the Doors, the whole outhouse goes up in flames.

By John Seiler

If the California government followed its own laws, right now state legislators’ pay would be suspended. They would be applying for EBT cards.

According to Prop. 25, which voters passed in 2010, the Legislature must pass a balanced budget by the June 15 deadline or legislators’ pay is suspended. They haven’t passed a balanced budget. But they’re still being paid.

That’s because a judge ruled in April this year that their pay wrongly was suspended for a couple of days in 2011 by Controller John Chiang because the budget wasn’t balanced. But Chiang writes the checks. If he can’t suspend the legislators’ pay, who is supposed to enforce Prop. 25? The judge said only the Legislature itself could do so. It’s like saying traffic violators get to determine how much their fines are.

Prop. 25 was sold to voters because it dropped from two-thirds to a majority vote the threshold for passing a state budget; excepting only tax increases, which remain at the two-thirds level. Legislators then were supposed to be disciplined by the pay suspension threat.

But it turned out the whole thing was an elaborate con job on the voters. Sacramento County Superior Court Judge David Brown, who dumped the pay suspension, if he was serious in his objections should have struck down the whole of Prop. 29. He didn’t. Judges, after all, depend on their pay, perks and pensions on the Legislature. And the courts have been facing severe budget cuts.

So the voters are turned once again into suckers. And the budget farce continues.

By Wayne Lusvardi

New York Times journalist Frank Rich once wrote about the spectacle that surrounded the recall of former California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003:

“Eastern snobs who airily condescended to the spectacle as merely another example of Left-coast madness just didn’t get it. As California goes so goes the nation. It’s Disneyland that prefigures the future, and the action-packed recall ride was nothing if not the apotheosis of the Magic Kingdom.  It was fun. It was instructive. And it set off a chain of unanticipated consequences whose full meaning will become apparent only with time.”

In 2003, former Gov. Gray Davis was facing a nearly $21.1 billion budget deficit, alongside the aftermath of the California Energy Crisis of 2001. California eventually had to issue a $15 billion general obligation bond authorized under Proposition 57 to pay off the budget deficit. It also ended up entering into long-term energy contracts to pay off $42 billion in unpaid bonds on old power plants mothballed to clean the air in 2001, which caused the resulting energy crisis.

Little did Rich know what he was writing about in 2003 might foreshadow the May 16, 2012 announcement that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was pulling financial support from the effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.  This coincidentally came on the heels of Gov. Jerry Brown’s May 12 announcement that California’s budget deficit had ballooned out of control from about $9 billion in January to $16 billion in May.

Was it purely coincidental that these two events were near in time? We don’t know for sure. But Wisconsin public opinion polls showed a 9 percent gap in opinion polls had opened up between the DNC’s recall candidate and Gov. Walker.

Walker recall diminishes

All of a sudden Wisconsin had become Frank Rich’s Tomorrowland.  At one point in 2011, Calwatchdog.com managing editor John Seiler aptly asked: “Will Wisconsin Protests Come to California?”  But following the “law of unanticipated consequences” mentioned by Rich, what happened was the reverse: California’s budget deficit may have sunk any real chances of the Democratic Party to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

When California voters passed Proposition 25 in Nov. 2010, the legislature was given the power to pass a budget with only a majority vote; little did they know what the consequence of that might be in Wisconsin. Writing in the Orange County Register on March 10, 2011, Daniel Weintraub stated: “Democrats are learning that a power they have long sought — to pass a budget with a majority vote — might not be the lever they thought it was going to be… With a Democrat in the governor’s office, that should make for easy sailing for a Democrat-driven budget plan.  But something very different is happening.”

What galvanized the Tea Party to take so many seats in Congressional races across the U.S. in 2010 was not only the issue of Obamacare.  It was also the prospect of other states having to pick up the cost to bail out California’s enormous budget deficit and debts. Did Wisconsin voters see “California coming and got scared” as James Brady once famously put it?  It sure looks like it.  Wisconsin finally found a function for all of California’s political dysfunction.

By Katy Grimes

California voters were duped by Democratic politicians, and they will probably do it again.

Proposition 25, the “no budget, no pay” measure, was the creation of über liberal former state Sen. John Burton. Prop 25 was sold to voters as an accountability measure in which lawmakers’ pay would be withheld if they couldn’t pass a balanced budget on time. One of the biggest selling points was that the measure lowered the threshold for passing a budget from two-thirds, to a simple majority vote of the Legislature.

The measure was touted as a way to break Sacramento’s annual government stoppage. But it was a scam heavily promoted by the Democratic-controlled legislature to be able to pass any kind of budget they wanted. Voters bought the lies.

Proposition 25 made it easier for politicians to increase taxes, spend taxpayer money ahead of collecting it, and do it all without consequences or accountability to the voters and taxpayers.

That is exactly what legislators in Sacramento did last June. They couldn’t get a budget passed with a two-thirds majority because Republicans wouldn’t vote for tax increases. So Democrats pulled a fast one and passed a budget with Democrat-only support, claiming it was balanced. Within days it was announced that the state was again in the red, and the “balanced budget” was a phony.

State Controller John Chiang withheld legislators’ pay, claiming that he was lawfully acting under 2010’s Proposition 25 because the budget passed by lawmakers was not balanced. Lawmakers lost pay for 12 days last year.

Once the Legislature passed a new budget, their pay resumed. But the Democratic leaders, Sen. President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento and Assembly Speaker John Perez of Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit in January, claiming that the controller overreached his authority.

Last week, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge David Brown ruled that Chiang violated the separation of powers clause of the California Constitution.

“It is obvious that the voters of California were manipulated by the majority party when they asked Californians to support Proposition 25, because the only people who can determine whether a budget is on time and balanced are the legislators themselves,” said Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar.

Huff is right.

Democrats are still celebrating the ruling, and insist that legislators cannot pass phony budgets because of the governor’s veto authority.

“I think the people of California will be glad that the court saw this the right way in the long term. Bottom line is, you can’t empower any official to leverage the pay of elected officials to try to achieve a result,” said Steinberg. “There’s a real opportunity for mischief.”

Judge Brown’s ruling is legally correct. He merely upheld the Constitution, and did not dally in politics. But voters still were duped.

History

The requirement for a two-thirds vote of both the state Assembly and Senate to pass a budget dates all the way back to 1933. A two-thirds majority vote on budgets has provided historical assurance that both major political parties be considered in spending plans, and it assures that all areas of the state are considered as well.

While Proposition 25 lowered the vote threshold to pass a budget, it also contained language that stated that appropriations (budget) bills can be passed with a simple majority. According to Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, some legal experts say that this means new taxes can be approved using this loophole, thereby circumventing the two-thirds requirement of Proposition 13.

Proving that Prop. 25 was just a way to circumvent the two-thirds accountability, in 2010 during the Prop. 25 campaign Steinberg said, “The question then becomes one of strategy and timing. Do you try to accomplish it all at once, or do you set a two- to four-year to six–year plan that takes a big piece or two at a time to voters?”

“It will send an important signal that Californians believe in majority rule and will help set the stage for taking on some of the regressive elements of Prop. 13,” the United Teachers Los Angeles told their members. The California Federation of Teachers and the California Teachers Association advanced a similar line.

After the passage of Prop. 25, voters assumed that an entity other than the Legislature would make the call, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “For people who supported Proposition 25, having the Legislature decide whether a budget is balanced is like letting teenagers decide their own curfew,” he said.

California is in a world of hurt, and Proposition 25 is only propelling us closer to real insolvency.

Upholding the Constitution

While Judge Brown found that the controller lacked the authority to decide whether the Legislature’s budget is balanced, his ruling was correct. The Controller does not have the authority to judge the validity of the budget.  According to Judge Brown, that authority is not in Prop. 25 and not in the state Constitution. That power rests solely with the Legislature.

“The Court must note that its ruling does not focus on the wisdom of either the June 15, 2011, budget bill, or Defendant’s criticisms and assessment of the bill,” Judge Brown wrote in his decision. “Defendant violated the separation of power clause of the Constitution as he essentially engaged in a function delegated exclusively to the Legislature.

“The Legislature is entrusted with the authority to pass the budget and make appropriations, including appropriations for legislative salaries. In these circumstances, the Controller’s audit powers are purely ministerial.”

By design, there was no enforcement mechanism built into Proposition 25.

Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, finally knows what it feels like to be the victim of his own policies. For years, he and other legislators have assaulted California businesses and jobs with absurdly high taxes and regulations. The worst is AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which is killing 1 million jobs.

Perez wasn’t in office when AB 32 was passed, then signed into law by then Gov. Arnold-Schwarzenegger (R-Sleazebag) to give Arnold something to do between womanizing sessions. But Perez has done nothing to repeal AB 32. And he opposed Proposition 23, the ballot initiative last November that would have suspended AB 32.

Perez cares nothing that AB 32 is killing a million jobs. He doesn’t care that California has the fourth-worst business climate in America. He just doesn’t care that we have the second-worst unemployment rate of the states, behind only Nevada.

So I don’t have any sympathy for Perez’s protests that Controller John Chiang, a fellow Democrat, docked all legislators’ pay for failing to pass a balanced budget by the June 15 constitutional deadline. Perez griped, “I continue to maintain that the Legislature met our constitutional duties in passing the budget last week.”

No, it didn’t.

In the private sector, if you don’t perform, you don’t get paid. Proposition 25, which voters passed last year and Perez supported, mandates that legislators’ pay is docked if they don’t pass an on-time budget. They didn’t do the job. So they shouldn’t get paid.

Let’s see how the tormenters like it when they’re tormented by their own policies.

June 22, 2011

The Extremists are Coming!

In the comments section to my blog yesterday, “Recall Jerry Brown!” , are two related comments. Jeff Gallagher wrote:

It’s clear that the Republicans have been unable to field a viable candidate [for governor] who is not pre-occupied with polling numbers. The public, in general, is tired of extreme politics, left or right. Where is the true voice of the people? And, if he or she is out there, how will we hear them over th din of pandering by both sides?

And our frequent commentator, StevefromSacto, wrote about the recall, which produced Arnold: “Yeah, how’d the last one work out for you?” StevefromSacto added:

Jeff Gallagher is right: The people of California are sick of extremist politics. Gov. Brown is trying to gather reasonable and responsible members of both parties into a coalition to help our state weather the storm.Maybe that’s why you are so frightened.

But where are these “extremists” they talk about? Like Reds in the 1950s, Red State extremists must be Under the Bed. I can’t find them anywhere else.

Liberal Democrats run the Legislature with large majorities, and hold all seven statewide elected offices. Last November, voters even allowed majority votes to pass a budget by passing Proposition 25.

And for that matter, liberal Democrats also run the White House and the U.S. Senate; for the previous four years, they also ran the U.S. House. Liberal Democrats also hold four of nine U.S. Supreme Court seats, and liberal Republican Justice Anthony Kennedy frequently jonis them to form a 5-4 liberal majority.

Even Republicans in Congress are spendthrifts, excepting Rep. Ron Paul and a couple of others. They ran up the deficits when they ran Congress when Bush was president. So far, they haven’t done much of anything to cut the $1.6 trillion deficit and the $14 trillion debt.

I don’t see small-government types like me running anything in California or America. We just pay the bills.

The only control Republicans have in the California Legislature is in two areas: A 2/3 supermajority still is needed to pass tax increases. And a 2/3 supermajority is needed to put tax increases directly on the ballot.

That’s it.

And if Gov. Jerry Brown and other Democrats want to get around that 2/3 requirement, it’s simple: Just call a special election and gather signatures for a tax increase proposition. Brown could do it for November.

But Brown wants a couple of Republicans in the Legislature to back putting a tax increase on the ballot, thus meeting the 2/3 requirement, so he can say, “See, even Republicans think it’s a good idea.”

Extremists under the bed? Sorry. The high taxes killed their jobs and they all left the state.

May 19, 2011

By JOHN SEILER

The voters have spoken: Cut the budget even more.

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democrats in the Legislature have spent several months insisting that voters must have the opportunity to approve extensions of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2009 tax increase. The amount would be $12 billion. And the vote must be taken in June.

Now that option looks to be dead.

Brown said yesterday, in the YouTube at the right:

Each and every Republican legislator I’ve spoken to believes that voters should not have this right to vote unless I agree to an ever changing list of collateral demands. Many of the Republican demands will actually increase our budget deficit and mean additional cuts to education and public safety.

Were the voters cheated? Not really. For two reasons.

First, the voters actually voted last November for this current system. They passed Proposition 25. According to Ballotpedia, here’s the official ballot title that voters read, and voted on:

Changes Legislative Vote Requirement to Pass Budget and Budget-Related Legislation from Two-Thirds to a Simple Majority. Retains Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Taxes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.

Only policy wonks and journalists like me actually read the full texts of budget measures. Almost every voter just checks out the wording right there in front of him in the voting booth, or on the absentee ballot.

So, here are the key words: “Retains Two-Thirds Vote Requirement for Taxes.”

What Brown wants is a little different, a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to put a vote on the ballot. But it’s essentially the same thing: a two-thirds vote on taxes.

Democrats currently are wallowing in their newfound power to pass a budget with just their majority, shunning Republicans completely.

Well, that power came only because voters passed the whole of Prop. 25, including the re-affirmation of the two-thirds vote requirement for a tax increase.

Tax Increase Would Lose

The second reason voters won’t be cheated by not having a tax-increase election in June is that polls clearly show the tax increase would lose. The PPIC poll released last week tallied that just 46 percent of likely voters backed the tax increase.

Anyone who’s been around politics a while knows that, if a tax increase doesn’t score well in polls more than two months before an election, it never will pass. So the election would just be a waste of the taxpayers’ money.

The cost of the 2003 recall Special Election was about $66 million, according to the Secretary of State’s office. With inflation, a Special Election this year well could cost $100 million.

So, by not having the election at all, the state just saved about $100 million.

Return of Gov. Moonbeam?

Brown has been trying to live down his Gov. Moonbeam reputation from the first Speed of Jerry Tour, 1975-1982. But as Katy Grimes reports today, sources in the budget negotiations complained that he didn’t bring his staff experts with him to negotiations.

I’ve never been a fan of ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But before he cut back his meetings with journalists, in 2004-05 he brought along his budget experts in two meetings he had with journalists at the Orange County Register. That included my colleague Steven Greenhut and myself, both then editorial writers at the paper.

In those early days of his administration, Arnold was sharp and up on the numbers in his budgets. But he obviously couldn’t know everything. When necessary, he let his budget experts answer a detailed question.

And we were journalists. Shouldn’t Brown do the same with Legislators, who actually write the budget bill, then vote on it?

Maybe Jerry is just Lost in Space.

A Time to Rend the Budget

As Ecclesiastes puts it:

This is a time of rending the budget.

With the voters having decided against tax increases (see above), the only option left is to cut the budget. As I have noted before, the real problem for the budget is the periodic wild spending binges that have left the state with a bad fiscal hangover.

To cite just one of the three spending binges, as recently as fiscal 2005-06, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic Legislature increased spending an incredible 15 percent. Then they increased spending another 10 percent for fiscal 2006-07.

They made no provision for an economic recession. Then the recession came. Cuts have been made. But not enough. More cuts need to be made.

Following the Gann Limit

Moreover, as I also noted in that article, this problem would not have occurred if voters, misled by promises of more road construction that never happened, had not effectively revoked the Gann Limit in 2000. The Gann Limit kept spending from rising above the increase in population plus inflation. Brown himself endorsed Gann when it passed back in 1979.

If Gann had been in place since 1993, spending on the general fund would be limited to $70 billion — or $16 billion less than the spending in Brown’s January budget proposal.

That is, there would be no need for $12 billion in tax increases. And the state would have an additional $4 billion for a rainy-day fund to cushion us through another recession — a fund governors keep promising to maintain, but never do.

Gov. Moonbeam will continue to pout. Some members of the Legislature will scream. But what has been obvious all along to some of us now is becoming clear even to the most recalcitrant: More spending cuts must be made.

Let the cutting begin.