California Democrats abuse majority power

Many years of partisan wrangling over California’s budget reached a climax in 2010 when public employee unions and Democratic politicians persuaded voters to pass Proposition 25, eliminating the two-thirds vote for budgets.

It gave the Legislature’s majority Democrats the power to pass budgets without having to garner Republican votes. But that’s not all it did.

Worried that voters might see it as a political power play, the measure’s sponsors added a political sugarplum, one declaring that if legislators didn’t pass a budget by June 15, the constitutional deadline, their salaries would be cut off.

They also included another proviso that extended the simple-majority vote to so-called “trailer bills,” measures supposedly needed to implement the budget.

This column and other critics suggested that the trailer bills could become political Christmas trees — ways for the majority party to bypass procedural rules and jam into law things that had nothing to do with the budget.

Although the Legislature has been in session for just a month, we’ve already seen two cases of how the Democrats are treating Proposition 25.

Last year, they used their newly won authority to pass a budget without Republican votes. When Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying it was unbalanced, Democratic Controller John Chiang cut off legislators’ paychecks, citing Proposition 25.

Brown and legislators quickly cobbled together a new budget on the miraculous assumption that the state would get an extra $4 billion in revenue. Most of the miracle money didn’t show up, and the budget is about $5 billion in the red. The Legislature is now suing Chiang, claiming that he had no authority to enforce Proposition 25.

If not Chiang, who? The Legislature, in effect, says it has the sole authority to decide whether it is in compliance, i.e., if it declares the budget to be timely and balanced, it is — regardless of what anyone else says.

On Thursday, we got another take on Proposition 25. The Legislature passed two minor, budget-related bills. Democrats added a third, Senate Bill 98, to reconstitute the Board of Registered Nurses, whose legal authority expired Jan. 1 because of a conflict between Brown and the Legislature.

The board should be re-established. By doing it through the legal fiction of a budget trailer bill with a token $1,000 appropriation, Democrats implied that they are willing to bend Proposition 25 however they want, even sidestepping the state constitution’s provisions on creating agencies.

Republicans objected, and some Democrats expressed concern. But the die is now cast.

Democratic leaders will ignore Proposition 25 provisions they don’t like and distort those they like — and wonder why voters hold them in such low esteem.

Dan Walters is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. Reach him at dwalters@sacbee.com.

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Posted by Dan Walters on Feb 3 2012.

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