August 21, 2007

What the Republicans held out for

For weeks the Senate Republicans have been accusing the governor (and nine of their Assembly colleagues) of selling out GOP principles by agreeing to the budget that passed in the lower house on July 20. Today, their leader blessed a new budget deal that:

--temporarily stops people from suing on global warming grounds to block the spending of bond money approved last year for transportation and levees.

--clarifies that transportation bond money for air pollution reduction can be used to help railroads run cleaner.

--blocks a proposal the Democrats had advanced to require all new state buildings after Jan. 1 2009 to be certified green, or energy efficient.

--blocks a Democrat proposal to give bureaucrats more time to fill vacant state positions before they are deleted from the budget.

In addition, the governor promised weeks ago to use his line-item veto to delete about $700 million from the spending plan.

The new elements that were part of today's package hardly seem like core Republican principles. They can pound their chests all they want, but if this is all it took to get them to vote for the budget, the deal could have been done weeks ago. In the end, only two Republicans -- Abel Maldanado and Republican Leader Dick Ackerman -- voted for the spending plan.

Posted by dweintraub on August 21, 2007 1:14 PM