While waiting for the state Senate to convene Monday, the California Channel, a public affairs television service, filled in by broadcasting a recent conference on the burgeoning movement to fundamentally overhaul California's dysfunctional state government.
When the Senate convened, it promptly demonstrated why such reform is desperately needed by spending – wasting, really – a couple of hours debating a Democratic budget plan that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had already pledged to veto, even though the state was 36 hours away from a fiscal meltdown.
"I will veto any majority vote tax increase bill that punishes taxpayers for Sacramento's failure to live within its means," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "The Legislature will have a difficult time explaining to Californians why they are running floor drills the day before our budget deadline."
"Drills" are Capitol jargon for symbolic exercises that don't do anything, and Monday's Senate session qualified, as did one later in the day to take up some bills that Republican senators, whose votes were needed for passage, had already rejected.
The sessions, following a similar Assembly exercise that began late Sunday and didn't end until after midnight, were supposedly aimed at holding Schwarzenegger's feet to the political fire, either forcing him to sign the bills, including those that increase taxes, or be held responsible when the state enters a new fiscal year on Wednesday without a revised budget in place.
Although a 2009-10 budget was passed in February, the deteriorating economy and voter rejection of significant portions at a May 19 election opened up a new hole that's at least $20 billion. And unless it's filled with more spending cuts or revenues, Controller John Chiang says he will begin paying some state bills with IOUs Wednesday because of a cash flow shortfall. It's evident now that the Legislature's much-vaunted post-May 19 process for fashioning a new budget was a colossal waste of time. In the end, Democrats just wrote a budget in secret, then tried to jam it down the Republicans' throats.
By squandering so much time working on bills that Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators had already declared dead on arrival, Democratic leaders were, inadvertently perhaps, demonstrating why California will never solve its perpetual budget crisis, or those involving water, education and myriad other issues, until it changes its political culture.
That's not to say that Schwarzenegger and Republicans are blameless. They are full participants in what the governor calls "kabuki," the stylized Japanese theater, posturing rather than doing the tough work of bringing income and outgo into balance.
We desperately need to empower those we elect to make decisions and then hold them strictly accountable for those decisions. Instead, we have a system that does precisely the opposite and encourages the buck-passing that was on display Monday.
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.
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