As important and visible as it may be, the political stalemate over the state budget – whether to close a whopping deficit with new taxes, spending cuts and loans – is not truly uppermost in the minds of most legislators.
While legislative leaders wrangle over the budget, rank-and-file lawmakers are more concerned with the annual game that pits business groups against unions, environmentalists, plaintiffs' attorneys and consumer activists over the latter's bills that would impose new costs and red tape on the former. Among other things the multi-front battle generates oodles of campaign funds.
Business groups label the four groups' major bills "job killers" and despite the leftward tilt of the Legislature, business lobbies are faring surprisingly well on defense with less than a week remaining in the 2008 session – and could even score some points on offense as an adjunct of the state budget wrangle.
Last week, the largest and most influential of the business groups, the California Chamber of Commerce, revised its "job killer" list, noting that 22 of its measures had already been stopped, leaving just 17 of the original batch still pending, plus another late-blooming entry that would make it easier for the United Farm Workers Union to organize field workers.
Ever since Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor five years ago, he's vetoed all but a handful of the business-opposed bills that reached his desk, and he'd probably continue that pattern this year, although his attitude on bills that purport to attack global warming, his self-proclaimed hallmark issue, is somewhat uncertain.
Chief among the global warming measures is Senate Bill 375 by the incoming president pro tem of the state Senate, Sacramento Democrat Darrell Steinberg, which would use transportation funds to nudge communities into adopting high-density housing policies. Steinberg negotiated a deal with the development industry, but other business groups remain opposed.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger has gone on offense for business by making several of their long-stalled goals part of an "economic stimulus" package that he wants enacted as part of any deal on the state budget. They include more public-private partnerships on infrastructure, which public worker unions oppose, and allowing workers to spend more than eight hours on the job without receiving overtime pay, which all unions oppose.
Tellingly, the Chamber of Commerce immediately endorsed Schwarzenegger's latest proposal to bridge the budget deficit, including a 1-cent increase in the sales tax on most taxable goods and some changes in tax treatment of business losses, and left little doubt that the "economic stimulus" component was the selling point. Chamber President Allan Zaremberg said the latter provisions would be "big wins for employers and workers."
All in all, it's entirely possible that, for better or worse, this could be a year in which business scores in its annual faceoff with liberal groups.
Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.
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