Well, here’s a bright spot in the phenomenally late, phenomenally messy 08-09 budget writing process: the Governor kept his word about taking whatever step necessary to compel Controller Chiang to implement his executive order. The Governor’s Department of Personnel Administration filed suit Monday afternoon in Sacramento Superior Court just a couple of hours after a wishy-washy, non-committal response out of Chiang’s office.
Let’s be clear: if Chiang were working as chief financial officer for any business, rather than for state government, he would have been fired long ago for even suggesting that we spend hundreds of millions of extra dollars on Wall Street for high-interest loans just so we don’t have to temporarily lay off 4 percent of our bloated workforce. He would have been fired long ago for failing to update his computer system so that it can easily comply with a 5-year-old court ruling.
The Governor did the right thing by suing to force him to comply with the state constitution, the state Supreme Court, common sense, and fiscal responsibility. We have a serious cash crisis coming – on that point, no one disagrees. And separate from the budget negotiations, the Governor is taking the right steps to prepare for that crisis by shutting down pieces of state government and trying to preserve cash flow. Chiang is clearly using this opportunity to rally his donor base and win points for the next election cycle rather than dealing with the issue before the state right now.
We may very well see a budget deal sometime between now and the end of the month (assuming Democrats choose to actually sit at the table with their Republican counterparts), and so this whole issue of temporarily reducing state workers’ pay may have no immediate effect, but my hope is that this lawsuit will have a lasting one and once and for all define the Controller’s role as ministerial during a budget impasse.
I’m crossing my fingers that the courts force the Controller to upgrade his computer system and that from now on, we see significant government shutdowns on July 1 if there is no budget – which is the way it should be.