Headlines
Critical Decisions Await Legislators Upon Their Return
Monday, July 26, 2010
The State Legislature is set to reconvene from its month long summer recess on Monday, August 2nd. Awaiting them upon their return are critical votes on hundreds of pieces of legislation, as well as an overdue state budget and a $19 billion deficit. Resolutions to all of these outstanding issues will need to be completed before the final adjournment of the 2009-10 Legislative sessions on August 31st.
Up to this point, there has been little substantive progress made toward forging a solution to the state budget crisis. The Democratic leaders of the two houses have begun to unite around a plan that focuses on tax increases and additional state borrowing, proposals that the Governor and Legislative Republicans have rejected out of hand. Democrats are equally resolute to hold the line against any further cuts to education and social programs, reductions that the Republicans feel are imperative to any long term solution to the state budget’s chronic structural deficits.
Election year politics, political rivalries, and the policy disagreements between the two parties, the Governor and the Legislature, and even the Democratic leadership of the two houses, have all combined to grind the process to a halt. Few – if any – see a resolution to the budget negotiations in the near term.
Also unresolved is the ultimate fate of the $11.1 billion water bond, the product of landmark legislation passed in the closing days of last year’s Legislative session.
Supporters of Proposition 18, the Water Bond – including the Governor and the President Pro Tem of the State Senate, Darrell Steinberg – now favor delaying voter consideration of the bond package by removing it from the November 2010 ballot and postponing a vote on the measure until 2012.
With recent polling data confirming their concerns, proponents of Proposition 18 say the primary motivation for delaying the bond vote is a fear that the size of the bond, coupled with the continued economic downturn, will make voters much more wary of supporting additional state borrowing of that magnitude.
Should the Legislature ultimately choose to pull the bond from the November ballot (a decision which would require a 2/3rd vote of both houses), it would not be without precedent. A $10 billion bond to fund a high speed rail system in California was postponed twice due to economic uncertainties before it was eventually placed on the ballot and approved by voters in 2008.