It is not easy being the minority party, yet that is what Republicans have had to settle with in the State Legislature (with a brief notable capture of the Assembly in the mid-90’s) — and the situation isn’t likely to change soon without real redistricting reform.
So it falls to Republicans to mount a strong contrast effort to make it clear that if we were the majority party, we would take California government in a much different direction than Democrats. To the credit of former Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman (and with great anticipation from his successor) and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines, Republicans have by-and-large been doing just that. Right now, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t get the point — Democrats stand for overspending and new taxes, and Republicans stand for spending cuts and no new taxes.
That said, there is one troubling issue taking place in the State Capitol, orchestrated by good ol’ Fabian "Louis Vuitton" Nunez where I have yet to see loud and clear Republican objection (and I am positioned to notice).
The issue is described aptly by Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters today in his column, where he says that Capitol "Cynics" have scored two "victories" (some sarcasm) — the issue to which I am referring he cites as "Victory No. 1" —
Victory No. 1 has to do with the Assembly’s secretive decision to offer more than 200 of its staff members a golden handshake in the form of extra pension benefits. It’s being billed as a contribution to closing the state’s chronic budget deficit, but how it does that is, to put it charitably, unclear since the Assembly refuses to release any data about the program’s fiscal effects.
That raises, quite understandably, suspicions that the golden handshake has been designed not so much to save money as to give some of the speaker’s top aides a little bonus as he vacates the position, and thus ease the way for his successor, Karen Bass, to fill the slots with her own choices.
Were the Assembly any other state or local government agency, it would have to disclose the calculations that went into these pension bonuses, but since the Legislative Open Records Act contains many exemptions, it has gone into stonewall mode, and there’s nothing that the media or public can do to crack the wall.