California Insider

A Weblog by
Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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November 19, 2003

Fun while it lasted

Strange and rather tense hearing today of the Assembly Budget Committee. The panel called Finance Director Donna Arduin to testify on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s fiscal plans but double-booked her with the Legislature's own financial analyst, Elizabeth Hill. Although Arduin was asked to appear at 10 a.m., then told she wasn’t needed until 10:30, Hill went on first and Arduin wasn’t called to testify until after 11:30. Arduin had a meeting with the governor scheduled for noon, so the late start sharply limited the time she could spend with the members. The morning’s mood was further fouled when Arduin, suffering from a sinus infection, asked if she could sit at the witness table rather than stand to deliver her report. The Committee Chairwoman, Jenny Oropeza, asked her to stand which Arduin did until finally giving up half-way through her presentation and deciding to sit, with or without permission.

Arduin gave a pretty good explanation of the problem facing her new boss: $25 billion in debt and a $14 billion annual structural gap between spending and revenues. She said that Schwarzenegger’s bond proposal, which he wants to keep at $15 billion or less, is, in her view, a repackaging of a piece of that current debt, not a taking on of new obligations. She continued the administration strategy of trying to blur the effect of the car tax cut on the numbers. She characterized the $3.6 billion obligation to local governments this year to make up for the loss in car tax revenue as part of Schwarzenegger’s inherited problem because, in the administration’s opinion, the tax was raised illegally and had to be rescinded. Arduin didn't endear herself to the members when, at one point, she slipped and referred to the state as Florida,”where she worked as budget chief for Jeb Bush until coming into Schwarzenegger's employ.

The committee’s decision not to call on Arduin until late in the morning, and her prior commitment, meant there was little time for questions. Never bashful, Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg jumped right in, peppering Arduin with queries about the bond measure, the car tax, the structural gap. Goldberg asked if Arduin thought the governor’s bond measure, if placed on the March ballot, would scare voters away from a big school bond measure scheduled for the same day. When Arduin paused before answering, and sought some guidance from her chief deputy, she left some members and many in the audience wondering if she knew that the school bond measure was pending. (She said later that she did.)

Then, as Goldberg was following up, the hour of noon arrived and Arduin abruptly stood, gathered her papers and excused herself from the hearing, leaving Goldberg looking stunned and administration aides behind to answer the lawmakers’ remaining questions. I guess the honeymoon is over.