Targeting California's bitter budget fights, Democratic legislative leaders proposed a wide-ranging overhaul Thursday that would allow lawmakers to pass budgets by a simple-majority vote and would require them to forfeit pay if they are late in passing a spending plan.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez hailed the package as a way to restore public confidence by making the budget process more efficient and ensuring that costly new programs are not approved without a way of paying for them.
"We all know that California's system of finance is broken," said Steinberg, D-Sacramento.
Added Pérez, "Californians are frustrated with the status quo. This needs to be a year of real and meaningful reform."
But Senate Republican leader Dennis Hollingsworth said the GOP could not accept any package that would allow Democrats to pass a budget without any Republican votes.
"I think every Californian is extremely concerned about runaway spending in Sacramento, and a proposal that would make it easier to spend even more money would fall flat on its face," Hollingsworth said.
Assembly Republican leader Martin Garrick, in a written statement, applauded some of the proposals but said the package "as a whole would send California taxpayers three steps back."
The reforms will be consolidated into at least one constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds majority of the Assembly and Senate to qualify for the ballot, meaning at least a handful of GOP votes in each house.
The package pushed by Steinberg and Pérez was crafted by a bipartisan political reform group, California Forward.
Besides allowing a state budget to be passed by a simple majority of each legislative house, rather than by a two-thirds vote, key elements of the reform package would:
• Require lawmakers to forfeit pay and per diem if they fail to pass a budget by June 25 each year.
• Force lawmakers to identify funding sources for legislation that would increase annual costs by $25 million or more.
• Require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to approve fees that would replace an existing tax.
• Target nonrecurring revenue for one-time purposes.
• Allow counties to place before voters a sales tax increase of up to 1 cent, for 10 years, if they adopt a "countywide strategic action plan." Passage would require a majority vote.
• Prohibit state officials from borrowing, transferring, or reallocating local property tax or redevelopment funds.
• Require the governor to base budgets on agency performance, not previous allocations, beginning in 2014-15.
• Allow the governor to reduce spending if the Legislature does not address a fiscal emergency within 45 days of an emergency being called.
Pérez and Steinberg also promised legislative operational changes that do not require legislation, including reducing the number of bills that legislators can propose and devoting more time and resources to oversight of state programs and agencies.
Find the Capitol Alert post announcing the reform package here.
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