Arnold Schwarzenegger

Here's my attempt, at Fox and Hounds, to expand on a post from last week. It turns out there is one governor more opposed to tax increases than Arnold.

Surprise, surprise. Democratic supporters of the redistricting initiative backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (a Republican) and former state controller Steve Wesly (a Democrat), are accusing Democratic regulars of trying to intimidate them. The party has come out against the redistricting measure.

It's not much, but there are stirrings of life that Gov. Schwarzenegger's political and ballot measure committee, the California Dream Team (which replaces the previous California Recovery Team, since the state has so obviously recovered), is preparing to fight for his budget reform plan. Lists have been emailed, and the team is asking voters to contact their legislators. This is an uphill fight, and while there are problems with Schwarzenegger's proposal, he is the only major actor who is pursuing his major budget reform this year. If he can sell this, Schwarzenegger can fulfill at least part of his promise from the recall to fix the budget and perhaps breathe new life into his governorship.

The current governor and the once (and future?) governor have had a warm relationship, campaigning together for municipal finance protections and against changes in the state's three strikes law. But Monday, during a long Schwarzeneggerian soliloquy at a Riverside event to promote his rainy day fund proposal, the governor took a shot at Brown in response to a question from a Southern California Gas official about the state's infrastructure problems. Here's the direct Arnold quote in the transcript, in full context:

"Well, California for 40 years has not really rebuilt our infrastructure in water, so we have now the stuff that was done under Governor Brown from the '60s. Not Jerry Brown, but Pat Brown, because Jerry Brown did not build infrastructure. They stopped building infrastructure when Reagan came in and so Pat Brown was the last one that built infrastructure. And so, since then our population has gone from 18 million to 38 million but we haven't built any new infrastructure. So, you still have the same water delivery system, we still have the same amount of reservoirs that are now between 50 and 75 percent down. We're running out of water, so there's a major problem."

Former speaker Fabian Nunez, a Democrat, shows up on today's Sacramento Bee editorial page to make the argument for Schwarzenegger's plan to borrow/securitize lottery revenues in order to reduce the deficit and fund a new rainy day fund. the lottery plan would require voter approval. Nunez continues to oppose the spending limitations in the governor's budget reform proposal. 

The former speaker's take may explain the governor's recent behavior. He seems detached from the budget, leaving any talks to legislative players. He has sounded very confident publicly that lawmakers ultimately will have to adopt something like his plan. He speaks as a man who has looked at all the other options, and found none.

Tom Elias is an independent columnist who was the first journalist to write about the possibility of a recall of then-California Gov. Gray Davis. He weighs in with a new column in which he says that for all the interest and excitement the recall and Davis' susccessor Arnold Schwarzenegger have sparked, the state is no  better off than it would have been without the recall.

A new poll from the Public Policy Institute of California finds that the two competing eminent domain measures, Propositions 98 (backed by conservatives, anti-tax groups) and Prop 99 (backed by cities), have less than 50 percent support. Less than two weeks before an election, that often spells doom for both measures. As such, this would be a victory for the backers of Prop 99, who qualified the measure in order to beat Prop. 98. Qualifying your own measure to defeat one you don't like is a time-tested tactic. In most cases, both initiatives go down. Each initiaitve purports to restrict the ability of governments to take property for private purposes, though Prop 98's protections are stronger--so strong the initiative also would eliminate rent control.

In other findings, the poll shows that Gov. Schwarzenegger's lottery plan is unpopular with the public--and his back-up proposal, a one-cent sales tax increase, has support from a narrow majority.

Below is the transcript, courtesy of Gov. Schwarzenegger's office, of an exchange he had with a questioner during a press conference Tuesday at the Environmental Defense Fund in San Francisco. The press event was about the environment and energy, but press questions went in a different direction. Schwarzenegger explains his public position on the anti-gay marriage initiative that appears headed to the November ballot. This shows the straddle the governor is doing on the issue, and offers a smart argument that the campaign against the initiative (that is, the campaign to preserve the newly elaborated right for gay couples to marry) might adopt. He's essentially saying that even if your own personal position is against gay marriage, you may not want to enshrine that in the state constitution. And that people may need to consider that there's an equal protection problem in denying the right to marry to gay couples. Bottom line: it's more coercive to ban gay marriage than to permit it, even if you don't like it. I suspect that may just be a winning political argument in California. It's an adult, nuanced position, and a responsible way for someone who wants to represent all the people to talk about it.

GOVERNOR:                                                 Yes?

Updated: There was strong push back yesterday from the administration on the report, which mirrors some of the commentariat's complaints about Schwarzenegger's budget. David Crane, the gubernatorial aide who is handling the lottery and budget reform plans, insists that the lottery plan is not a loan, but a sale, and that every penny will go to the rainy-day fund at the heart of the budget reform. 

Here's original post:  

Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan to securitize the state lottery in order to fund a rainy day fund and balance the budget in the coming fiscal year is flawed, according to a report released today by the Legislative Analyst's Office, which advises the state legislature. Specifically, the bond would create the "strong likelihood that distributions to public education from the lottery would fall well short of their current levels—perhaps by $5 billion over the next 12 years combined." Schwarzenegger needs legislators to put his proposal on the ballot -- and needs voters to sign off on it. With the LAO saying education could be hurt, this proposal is likely going nowhere.

Your blogger had to spend yesterday afternoon and evening on some personal business. He woke up this morning to find himself almost alone among politicians and commentators in arguing that Gov. Schwarzenegger's May revise sets the stage for a breakneck push for budget reform. (Whether that reform is a good idea is another story. His proposal's focus on the spending side makes it incomplete).

But commentators have dismissed much of what he's proposed as gimmicks or borrowing. At the Sacramento Bee, Dan Weintraub writes that Schwarzenegger has surrendered in his attempts to balance the budget. His full funding of the Prop 98 education guarantee -- an essential strategic move if he wants to maintain enough popularity to convince voters to adopt any kind of budget reform -- is largely dismissed, and the resulting proposed cuts to health and human services programs are emphasized in responses from legislators (via Sac Bee). Others argue that the budget is not fiscally responsible -- true, but it's politically the right approach if you believe, as the governor appears to believe, that the only way for California to get a handle on its persistent budget problems is major structural reform of the process itself.