Democrats take aim at budget vote margin
Sacramento Bee
Monday, September 22, 2008
By Aurelio Rojas
Frustrated by the longest budget impasse in California history, Democratic leaders are planning another ballot measure to end the two-thirds vote requirement in the Legislature to pass a state budget.
Voters, by a 2-to-1 margin, defeated a similar effort in 2004 that would have also lowered the vote threshold to raise taxes from two-thirds to 55 percent.
But incoming Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass say this year's budget – now 84 days late – underscores the need to re-visit the issue in 2010, or next year if there's a special election.
California is one of only three states – Arkansas and Rhode Island are the others – that require a super-majority budget vote and the only state where the governor also has line-item veto authority.
While Democratic lawmakers hold commanding margins of 48-32 in the Assembly and 25-15 in Senate, they need Republican votes to pass a budget.
"It makes no sense to completely thwart the will of the majority by empowering, in this instance, essentially nine people to dictate the outcome of the most important thing that California state government does," Steinberg said.
The Sacramento Democrat will become Senate president pro tem on Nov. 30 when Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, is termed out of office.
"Sen. Steinberg and I, Sen. Perata and I, members of my caucus – we have all talked about as soon as this is over, we need to have a permanent fix," said Bass, D-Los Angeles.
But Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines of Clovis opposes changing the two-thirds threshold because "it offers protection to taxpayers."
"It's too critical, especially when we have rampant overspending and they're trying to raise taxes," Villines said.
How to make a ballot measure more palatable to tax-averse voters remains an obstacle Democratic leaders hope to overcome in the coming months.
It's unclear whether the proposal that emerges would also lower the vote threshold for raising taxes. Steinberg said both thresholds probably need to be lowered eventually because "with a two-thirds requirement to raise taxes we wouldn't have enough room to create a fair and balanced approach."
"The question then becomes one of strategy and timing," he said. "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?"
Bass said one possibility would be to return to the threshold approved by voters in 1933, which required a two-thirds majority vote of the Legislature only in years when spending was 5 percent higher than the previous year.
Designed to hold down state spending during the Depression, the law was amended in 1962 when voters removed the 5 percent formula and instituted a two-thirds majority every year.
In recent years, the threshold has been more successful at holding up the budget than tamping down state spending, which has increased 40 percent in the past four years as the deficit has crept to $15.2 billion.
Of the last 22 state budgets, just four were approved before the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
"It's become a ritual and a joke," Steinberg said. "Every year there's this expectation that the budget is going to be late."
Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, is one of the most conservative members of the Legislature. But he said the two-thirds vote requirement has failed to control state spending and unnecessarily delayed budget enactment.
McClintock has long advocated reducing the vote to a simple majority, which he said would hold the majority party accountable for spending decisions.
He also believes doing so would stem side deals in which members are rewarded with expensive pork barrel projects for their districts in return for their budget votes.
"I would support a majority vote for the budget provided that it was linked to strengthening the two-thirds vote for taxes," McClintock said.
That threshold, he said, was undermined when the state Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that state and local governments could approve fees on a majority-vote basis so long as the money is used to correct health problems.
Steinberg said he plans to meet with Bass and other lawmakers this fall and early next year to develop strategies.
"I certainly do not want to preside over an institution for the next five to six years, where we know what's wrong and yet we continue to go through the same thing year after year," he said.
Steinberg envisions "parallel tracks" in which possible ballot measures are debated in the Legislature at the same time signatures are gathered for a possible initiative.
"I want to work with my colleagues in the (Democratic) caucus and on the other side of the aisle," he said. "But I have no illusions about achieving a two-thirds supermajority to put something on the ballot, so we need an outside strategy as well."