From what I have been told, today the State Legislature will take up a Democrat-only drafted budget "fix" that includes BILLIONS in tax increases, and they will do so using trickery that will require only a majority vote for passage. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is a current court ruling that says that the State Constitution’s requirement for a 2/3 vote for a tax increase does not apply to what bureaucrats call a fee.
You and I as lay persons would think of a fee as like what you pay to go into a state park. Okay, fine, so increasing a fee for services received by someone going into a park takes a majority vote? Right. But this idea of differentiating a "fee" from a "tax" has been taking to extreme and massive levels by Sacramento liberals. For example, what you and I call the car tax — that you pay annually when you register your car — they would call a fee. They would argue that the funds from your "car fee" go to provide services with a nexus to your driving (roads, etc). And they then make the case that this fee requires only a majority, not a 2/3 vote.
Apparently the extreme panic of having to cut spending has caused liberal policy consultants to go through all state spending, and figure out where there can be a direct nexus between creating or increasing a "fee" and something that is already paid for by the state.
The result is some mysterious package that we will see today that is jam-packed with end-runs around the will of the people for a super-majority of the legislature to approve tax increases.
I feel pretty comfortable saying that Governors Deukmejian and Wilson would not only have vetoed a monstrosity of this sort if it reached their desk, they would have actually made it clear, upon hearing about the plan, that it would was DOA. Arnold 1.0 would have done the same.
That said, it is my hope that Governor Schwarzenegger would and will make it clear that he has not interest in signing into law any massive "fee" increases that are uniformly opposed by all of the legislators from his own party. That said, I am also not betting on it. We certainly haven’t seen any kind of statement from his office opposing this kind of back-room screwing of California taxpayers..