I voted for one budget in my time in the Legislature. It was the first Schwarzenegger budget (’04-’05), the one constructed by Donna Arduin (who is, by the way, a true fiscal conservative), back when Schwarzenegger was still the Terminator, and not the Capitulator. I thought long and hard before I voted for that budget, studied its implications, its assumptions, and came to the conclusion that the Governor deserved my support. It started out, in the January budget as a $1.1 billion spending cut. It ended up, after negotiations with the spending addicts in the Democrat Legislature, and the advocates of the status quo in the Governor’s administration, as a $100 million spending increase. As I recall, it was a $78.3 billion general fund budget.
The next year (’05-’06), the finance director was Tom Campbell, and the final budget proposal was $92 billion, the largest spending increase in the history of the state (larger than the largest Gray Davis increase). A serious dilemma was facing Legislative Republicans. The Governor had worked hard to put his initiatives on the ballot, which included a real spending limit, removing mandatory public employee union dues, and other worthy ideas. A stand-off might jeopardize those very worthy ideas. A vote for the budget would be the start of the next fiscal disaster, which would become evident about the time some of the new legislators were looking to move up the political ladder. The administrations solution? Lie to the legislators about the size of the increase. The administration literally re-listed expenditures in the ’04-’05 budget from special funds to general funds, in order to make the increase look smaller (a mailer attacking the legislators who voted for the budget as voting for the "second" largest increase in the state is considerably less effective than one that says they voted for the largest). I stood up in caucus and told the caucus about the deception, but it fell on deaf ears.
Roger Niello at the time told the caucus he was an accountant and that he believed the administration and not me. The administration numbers were the right numbers he said. It turned out he was wrong. (Another legislator, who voted for that budget, has since seen the light, literally argued with me on the floor, telling me I didn’t know what I was doing). The next year, when the administration was preparing for the second largest increase in spending in the state’s history, they corrected their numbers. I showed Roger those numbers, which confirmed every thing I had said the year before. I thought Roger got it.
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