After what one senator described as a "raucous" budget committee hearing last night, Senate leader Don Perata stripped fellow Democrat Sen. Joe Simitian of his chairmanship of an influential environmental policy committee.
The move was reflected in Thursday morning's Senate Daily File, where the chairmanship of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee was now marked "vacancy."
Simitian could not be reached for comment, while Perata declined to comment on the move.
At Wednesday night's hearing, the committee recommended $500 million in current year education cuts. But Simitian, a Palo Alto Democrat, was advocating a different approach to the cuts that would involve recalculating the Proposition 98 education funding guarantee.
One committee member, Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat and the Senate's president pro tem-elect, said the meeting "got a little raucous."
"We ran into a little bit of a controversy, if you will, with the Prop 98 issue and one of our members had a very legitimate, Joe Simitian had a very legitimate point of view about whether or not we rebench Prop 98," said Steinberg. "You know Senator Perata and Senator (Denise) Ducheny (the chair of the budget committee) did not want to rebench Prop 98 down as a result of one of the cuts we were making."
Steinberg spoke with The Bee on Thursday morning before news of Simitian's chairmanship removal was known.
"I stepped in, and I essentially explained my point of view and that you know, we need to (side with) Senator Ducheny on this. We went on our way," Steinberg said.
Simitian, despite his vocal disagreement with Perata and Ducheny, joined the eight other Democrats on the committee in unanimously approving the midyear budget cuts. Republicans abstained from the vote.
Mike Genest, the director of finance for the Schwarzenegger administration, said he saw few differences between the approach advocated by Simitan and what was ultimately approved by the committee.
"The two approaches get you to the same result," Genest said, saying the amount of money dedicated to schools remained the same. "I don't really understand the substantive issue there."
Substantive or not, Simitian was missing his chairmanship come Thursday morning.
Perata, who is termed out of the end of 2008, has shown a penchant for governing his house with iron fist.
In 2007, he locked three moderate Democrats out of their offices after they attended a fundraiser for moderate Democrats in the Assembly. Last year he also stripped Sen. Jeff Denham, a Republican, of his vice chairmanship of the Senate Governmental Organization Committee after Denham refused to vote for the budget.
A recall attempt of Denham, spearheaded by Perata and the Democratic Party, recently announced turning in double the number of signatures necessary to trigger a recall of the Central Valley Republican.
The Bee's Aurelio Rojas contributed to this report.
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