Perhaps the saddest commentary on the very sad state of politics in Sacramento comes from Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. Asked why the Legislature and the Governor couldn’t produce an infrastructure bond for the June ballot, Perata offered this excuse: “We ran out of time.”
Were this the military, there’s be an even simpler, one-word answer: SNAFU. Racing the clock — and failing to beat the clock — is standard operating procedure for the Capitol gang.
From the first moment Governor Schwarzenegger talked about infrastructure in his State of the State to the deadline for the June ballot — roughly 10 weeks — California’s best and brightest couldn’t come up with a plan. But this happens pretty much every year in Sacramento. It’s called the budget, which rarely if ever gets done on time.
Who gets the blame for this latest failure to launch? Pretty much everyone involved. The Governor’s Office didn’t do a terribly effective of prioritizing what came first in terms of the state’s needs — was it levees, or roads? Or maybe both, plus schooIs and roads and bridges and dams . . . It’s hard to tell.
Legislative Democrats made the calculation, to no one’s surprise, to turn the bond into Christmas in March: witness all the money that Speaker Nunez tried to funnel into education. Breaking down all the goodies in the multi-billion bond reads like annual tributes to the Aga Khan. As for legislative Republicans, they simply looked cranky and obstructionist — the few, the proud, the prudish.
So now we’ll see a second attempt to do an infrastructure deal. And, for Schwarzenegger, it’s a chance to break a worrisome losing streak. Early in his term, Arnold succeeded at 11th-hour brinkmanship, selling the Legislature on workers’ compensation reform. But the last two times Arnold’s played beat the clock, he’s failed — both times, in a very public way. Last year, it was trying to cut a deal regarding his special-election agenda. This time, it was last-minute negotiations over infrastructure. Will cutting a deal later this summer be any different?
It would be a refreshing change if, for once, lawmakers acted genuinely ashamed, got to work, and got a bond done well in advance of the next ballot deadline. But one doubts that will happen — it’s simply not the nature of the beast. Legislators like to pride themselves as a merry band of 10 o-clock scholars, willing to burn the midnight oil to get the job deadline.
Too bad they don’t realize that their work isn’t worth a gentleman’s C.