The last-minute frenzy surrounding the infrastructure bond negotiations looks depressingly familar to anyone who’s ever watched the state legislature flounder its way to the deadline for passing a state budget every year. Months of posturing, preening, and procrasination, followed by a panicked rush in the last hours to fulfill their actual responsibility and negotiating out an agreement. Endless pledges to stand on principle no matter what, before finally compromising or letting others do it on their behalf.
Yawn.
Like a college student pulling all-nighters before his finals, these people are congenitally incapable of getting their work done before their backs are up against the wall. Instead of spending the semester hanging out at beer bashes and fraternity parties, though, legislators instead spend their spring term holding hearings in which they ignore witnesses, talk past each other, and generally behave as if they would have an allergic reaction to any type of productive negotiation and compromise.
Such is life in a state capitol dominated by special interests. Before actually engaging in reasonable discussion, there is tremendous pressure on members from both parties to play to their respective bases. Even if productive conversation becomes necessary at some point, it’s critical for legislators to spend as many weeks as possible showing off for their largest donors.
The legislators’ favorite variation on the procrastination game is blaming the governor (Schwarzenegger, Davis, doesn’t really matter). If only the governor would stay in Sacramento and meet with them instead of traveling to other parts of the state to talk to real live voters, then these delays would not be necessary. This is a convenient excuse, but not a very accurate one. When Pete Wilson was governor, he would routinely cancel public appearances in order to meet with legislators. The process didn’t move any more quickly when he was physically present: the legislators still had constituencies to satisfy for as long as they could before getting down to business.
Schwarzenegger is not entirely blamlesss in this. He spent months acting as if putting the bonds on the November ballot rather than in June would be just fine with him. It’s only in the last two weeks that he’s realized that June was a better bey for him. For all the benefits of running for re-election at the same time he was campaigning to pass the bonds, there’s no guarantee that the legislature would give him a bond for November either. Add to that some serious questions about whether his donor base would be able to fund the campagn to pass the bond package at the same time they were giving to his re-election and for and against any number of other iniatives headed toward the general election ballot. The result is the usual mad dash toward resolution.
A bond on the November ballot could pass, although Democratic legislators would have to figure out how to campaign against the governor and for his bond package at the same time. But whether it’s June or November, the same frantic, senseless sprint to the finish line is going to result in a bond measure that’s not nearly as well-thought as it could have been.