The "Rule of 8" established by the Senate Republican Caucus says that until a majority of Senate Republicans are ready to sign off on a budget, no GOPers go up. Of course Senator Maldonado demonstrated his lack of solidarity by voting with all of the Democrats and against all of his Republican colleagues … so I guess its more of a "guideline" than a rule (h/t to Capt. Barbosa).
Well just a few minutes ago, on a breakdown that mirrored the leadership vote to retain Dick Ackerman as leader last year, Senate Republicans voted 8-7 to allow Ackerman (along with Maldonado) to go up on the budget.
The moving parts that allowed this to come about was a CEQA fix that includes not only development with a nexus to the transportation bonds but also to water bonds. I understand there may have been some tightening up of the nature of blue-line cuts being made by the Governor.
More analysis will be forthcoming … let’s see if this all translates to an actual budget on the Governor’s desk. I will close by saying that the efforts of Senate and Assembly Republicans have made some modest but important improvements to the originally introduced budget. But that we must not loose sight of the fact that, on balance, the budget is terrible, and reflects spending priorities of liberal Democrats. The exclamation point on the end of this sentence is that only two GOP Senators will go up on the budget today.