It’s time to show lawmakers who’s boss
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
March 31, 2009
Abdication is not high on the list for organizational leadership traits, but it is one characteristic that would aptly describe California’s current political status.
As the state heads into the final stretch for a special election to try to stave off another budget disaster, members of the political parties are still warring about the merits of several special-election measures designed to pull California out of the economic abyss.
That seems fitting for a state whose alleged leaders wasted months battling about the ideological value of tax hikes versus spending cuts as billions of dollars were being lost in the interim.
The ballot measures, Propositions 1A through 1E on your May 19 voting scorecard, are showing tepid public support, according to recent polls, and there are a host of active political groups lobbying to defeat them. Organizations on the left are weighing in against any spending controls, and groups on the right are battling any future tax hikes.
Sounds a little like the recent arm-wrestling matches in Sacramento.
We know there’s trouble ahead when our Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has to count on ultra-liberal supervisors from San Francisco in a desperate attempt to get voters out to the polls. Polar opposites attract, it seems, only when politicians realize the treasure chest is about to be empty.
And now the season of fear is upon us — doom and election gloom will be the topic of conversation and crafty attack ads for the next six weeks. How dark will it become? Political experts say it will be like air-raid siren warnings during the height of the Cold War.
“Closing prisons, shutting down hospitals, burning school children at the stake — all these horrors and worse await Californians who work to defeat Prop. 1A and the others,” is the message voters will likely hear, according to Dan Schnur’s blog in the new online political Web site Calbuzz.
Schnur, director of USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, said the best way for an “unpopular governor” selling an unpopular batch of spending initiatives is to keep the governor out of the ads and let everyday citizens tell the story of California’s certain economic demise if the measures fail.
That’s how bad it has become. The world’s most well-known action star has been asked to hand in his script. Talk about your box-office busts.
But here’s my fearless prediction: As much as Californians hate the idea of being taxed silly because of the undeniable failure of state lawmakers to deal responsibly with California’s fiscal free fall, they will ultimately bail them out to remind them who really holds the power when it comes to the state’s future. And it will serve as a message to legislators that their careers are in the balance now that they’ve given up control of the direction of the state’s economic process.
I doubt that after May even some state lawmakers in so-called safe districts will be feeling confident. After all, if Republican leaders were willing to throw California off the cliff and into bankruptcy — which several renegade GOP officials who voted for tax increases said party honchos were willing to do — what’s to stop voters from playing the same game?
At this point, most observers say the only sure thing on the May ballot is Prop. 1F, which would prevent the Citizens Compensation Commission from awarding pay raises to lawmakers in years when the state carries a deficit. The only reason the measure is on the ballot, however, is because rebel GOP state Sen. Abel Maldonado exacted it from Democratic leaders in return for his swing vote to pass the $15 billion in tax hikes that are included in the other propositions.
It should tell you a lot that some state officials came within hours of shutting down hundreds of construction projects and costing thousands of jobs based on doctrinaire beliefs about taxes. In nearly 30 years of covering state politics, it’s the first time I can recall hearing that elected officials were willing to risk California’s economic standing as a way to punish the opposing party.
That continuing level of partisanship is one of the reasons we’re so close to the brink, but now it appears the voters are willing to go for broke — if indeed the polls are right.
For his part, Schwarzenegger said the crisis might actually be a good thing for California because it will allow voters to take the power away from legislators in making necessary fiscal reforms. He’s been going around to various state editorial boards to champion this “great opportunity.”
The only thing great about it may be if it never comes up again.
Ken Garcia appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Examiner. Check out his blog at www.sfexaminer.com/opinion or e-mail him at kgarcia@sfexaminer.com.
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