Last Wednesday, Governor Schwarzenegger called for a meeting of the "Big 5" (Perata/Ackerman/Nunez/Villines/himself) to take place this afternoon… The topic — water bonds. Specifically, the Governor wants to see if he can work out differences between Democrats and Republicans that have thus-far kept an agreement from being reached.
The dynamics to put together a water deal are interesting. On the Republican side, to get a deal, you have to be able to get enough votes in an environment where the state’s fiscal crisis makes a vote to place another big bond deal on the ballot a tough vote (it’s hard enough to get GOP votes for bonds when the fiscal situation is rosy). That said, everyone acknowledges we have a water storage problem that needs attention. On the Democrat side, where normally everyone lines up (like a cattle call) whenever there are bonds discussed (Democrats are genetically wired to embrace spending increases), there is significant push-back from the eco-nuts who have never met a dam they didn’t want to rip out, or a reservoir they would like to drain. Offsetting this would be the larding-up of the bonds with all kinds of "green" spending to make the rest a bit more palatable.
So what is the main hang up, besides the unique challenge that the leaders would have in drumming up votes on the left and right? Apparently Democrats want the portions of the bonds that go to building dams and reservoirs to have to be voted on by the legislature at the time they are built, separate from the actually approval by the voters to authorize the borrowing. In other words, they want a veto power. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Republicans who support a water bond would be incompetent to sign off on such a deal, as they know — hence there is no deal.
Frankly, if there are going to be water bonds, there should be language that authorizes specific portions of the "green" spending tied to benchmarks in the building of the reservoirs and completion of various stages of conveyance construction. If not, the left will simply mire down the dams/reservoirs/conveyance construction in litigation. Does the language in this proposed bond contain all of the necessary CEQA suspensions, etcetera in order to minimize legal shenanigans? I don’t know.
Well, we will see what comes out of the meeting. I did confirm that the meeting is still on, by the way, despite the hospitalization of the Governor’s mother-in-law, Eunice Shriver. The Governor was in Massachusetts, but already jetted back (no-doubt "offsetting" his jet’s carbon footprint the whole way.)