Much of the budget negotiation wrangling that has been taking place the last couple of weeks is over the intolerable situation where, with the adoption and your signing into law of the "Global Warming Solutions Act" (also referred to by it’s bill number, AB 32), liberal Attorney General Jerry Brown is now able, using government attorneys, sue anyone trying to build anything.

The lesson to be learned here is that you are ill-serving yourself, and the people of California, when Democrats craft and you sign legislation, excluding Republican legislators from the process.  In the State Senate, AB 32 was passed on a 100% party line vote, with NO REPUBLICAN SENATORS voting for it. Still, you signed it, and trumpeted his new era of "post-partisanship" (this is defined by you, apparently, as capitulating on Democrat issues unilaterally).

The very issues that Republicans have been bringing up now are those that they brought up at the time that AB 32 was being considered in the legislature. But the your method of finding the "political middle" is NOT to bring everyone together on every issue, but to tack far left and far right (though not much of the latter lately) and calling the ‘average’ of these the middle.  AB 32 was bad public policy when you signed it and it still is today, unless your goal is to completely stop the development of any new infrastructure or housing in California (which last I checked, is NOT your position).

If you would simply, like your GOP Gubernatorial predecessors George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, empower legislative Republicans by having a policy that bills that do not garner a good amount of GOP votes in getting to your desk would be veto-bait, then we would avoid situations like the one we are in today.

So look closely into that mirror.  It is because of the way that you use your office — because of the way that you effectively mute the ability of legislators from your party to have meaningful input on policy by your willingness to work exclusively with Democrats that you have created the messy (and predictable) aftermath of his "Global Warming Solutions Act."

The good news is that is not to late to change his approach.  As a matter of fact, now would be a perfect chance to change it.  Nearly 1,000 pieces of legislation will now be considered by the legislature in the final weeks of session, not to mention the pending discussion and action on the issue of access to health care.

Today, you should make it clear that substantial Republican votes are needed to gain your signature on any of those bills.  If you truly want to be a moderate, by enacting this policy, it will moderate the otherwise extreme left-wing policies in these bills that come to your desk.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.