Governor Jerry Brown and his closest advisers must be rolling their eyes, and wringing their hands in frustration. After all, this year Brown is going to try to do what many think is an impossible task — which is getting the state’s voters, in the midst of a recession, to raise taxes on themselves. One thing that Brown knows is that if he is to have a reasonable shot at this endeavor, the public must be convinced that these higher taxes are absolutely necessary. Certainly a critical part of Brown’s efforts include convincing the voters that he and the leaders of the State Legislature will be good stewards of their tax dollars. So when he watched yesterday as Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez held a press conference to publicly announce a lawsuit against Controller John Chiang (a fellow Democrat) because they were unhappy that Chiang wouldn’t let them pass an unbalanced budget, Brown undoubtedly saw this action as detrimental to his plans.

One has to acknowledge the moxie of Steinberg and Perez. In essence, they are leading the charge for the idea that if the legislature wants to say that a budget isn’t balanced, and pass it anyway, that they should have the right to do so without any interference from Chiang or anyone else who is not in the legislature. Seriously. Never mind the Constitutional requirement that California has for a balanced budget. And never mind the fact that the reason that the State Controller has the responsibility in the Constitution to withhold legislator pay when they have not passed a balanced budget on time is due to Proposition 25, a measure that also reduced the vote threshold for a budget to a simple majority of each house, and that was endorsed by Steinberg and Perez.

Steinberg and Perez can try to “spin” their lawsuit (which will be funded through out taxpayer dollars, I must point out), but the public is going to see this for what it is — a foreshadowing of plans by legislative Democrats to try to use more gimmicks and smoke and mirrors to pass a budget that does not true up state spending to available tax revenues. There is already an over-$5 billion “difference of opinion” between Governor Brown and the state’s independent Legislative Analyst over projected tax revenues for the next budget year, and no doubt Steinberg and Perez (propped up by their public employee union boss benefactors) do not want the Controller weighing in (I wrote about that potential here).

This kind of stunt takes me back to 2009, when a different Governor and legislative leaders were pushing for Californians to vote to raise their own taxes, and then-Speaker Karen Bass decided to announce big pay raises for hundreds of Assembly staffers. In that case, Bass took so much head from the public that within 48 hours she announced that she was rescinding the raises. But the damage had been done — it was a seminal moment of definition to voters about how the legislature operators. The “Washington Monument Strategy” that Brown needs to perfectly execute, to convince the voters that the only option in the absence of tax increases, are draconian cuts to programs that the public wants to retain, it seriously imperiled by actions like the one taken by Steinberg and Perez yesterday.

Oh, it is worthy of note that this Keystone Cops-esque lawsuit come on the heels of Steinberg giving out raises to Senate staffers, and Perez giving out raises to Assembly staffers. While they did this over the holidays to try and avoid the negative political consequences of these actions, it will all be part of a narrative that will make Brown’s herculean task of passing a tax increase just that much harder.

California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro was quick to state the obvious in a statement released right after Steinberg and Perez announced their plans to defend the legislature’s right to cook the books… “This cynical lawsuit seeks to chill the efforts of the Controller’s office and makes a mockery of Prop 25. We could benefit from a more robust State Controller that audits our government programs and looks for savings in every corner. Rather than blame the Controller for last year’s illusory budget, the Democrats should look for positive ways to ensure reform in this year’s budget.”

Up to this point, legislative Republicans have been silent on this action by Steinberg and Perez, other than to make it clear when queried that they were not asked about the lawsuit and are not a party to it. The unfortunate reality for Republicans are that these actions are being taken by the legislative leaders for whom they voted, and it is a fair critique to say that the absence of direct, public criticism of the lawsuit from Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff and Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway, that the GOP is feeding a narrative that this effort really enjoys bipartisan support within the legislature. I would strongly encourage legislative Republicans to come out strongly against the lawsuit, and file their own brief with the court opposing the actions of Steinberg and Perez. It was the liberal Democrats who all rallied behind Proposition 25, and as the saying goes, they need to reap what they sow.

On a closing note, if you hear the sound of celebration in the background, that would be toasting of this action by the folks at the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who know all too well how these actions by Steinberg and Perez will further reduce the already small appetite that voters will have to tax themselves this November.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 7:19 am and is filed under Blog Posts.