San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
This week’s installment of BAIHH (acronyms are so stupid, and I just needed to prove it) was going to be a meditation on the state of state government, except I can’t quiet my mind.
The deadline for passing a state budget is here, and in the balance hangs the future of lots of stuff, including my topic du siécle—education—or, more specifically, the operation and financing of the 2011-12 school year. I don’t dare to think much beyond that—sort of like our leaders. The difference is that they’re paid by you and me to consider the future when making decisions that affect us, and we have little say (none, if Republicans get their way) in any of it. Depressed yet?
Last Wednesday, the Legislature passed a budget along party lines, one that left local Fox newscasters in a huff because of the devastating implications for San Diego’s public-education system prospect for a new football stadium. The budget included even more cuts than what the Dems passed in March, when they slashed their wrists, as well as roughly $14 billion from the deficit.
If you’re blind, deaf, dumb, lame, old, young, brown and/or poor, you may no longer have services, but you can be proud, knowing you’re shouldering all of the sacrifice.
In return, the Democrats wanted Republican support for an election on what would have been a tax extension had the election been held this month, but what will be conveniently labeled “new taxes” if voters get a say in an upcoming election. For sure, Republicans are better tacticians.
The Dems would certainly have liked for the GOP to offer up enough votes to directly extend the taxes, but knowing that was never going to happen, they’re simply asking the Republicans to allow an election. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, my daughter would say. But being as allergic to democracy as they are, Republicans have stabbed themselves in the leg with an EpiPen and said no.Only four Republican votes are needed to give us the right to say whether we’d be willing to extend some soon-to-expire taxes. But they don’t want to hear a peep from voters. Unlessss— they get seven pages worth of demands met. These gimmes would be “locked into the state constitution,” as the San Diego Union-Tribune put it, in exchange for an election that holds no equitable guarantee for the Democrats.
Republicans: Disproving every day the stereotype of thugs and gangstas.
Gov. Jerry Brown chided the four Republicans, saying they were refusing to allow voters to decide on tax extensions “unless I agree to an ever-changing list of collateral demands.”
And that brings us to last Wednesday’s budget. It may have been designed to buy Brown more time to negotiate with these economic terrorists. It may also have been a genuine attempt to do something, which is better than nothing. Regardless, some thought Brown would pinch his nose and sign the budget—which sliced $3 billion from public education—were he unable to wrangle those essential four votes.
But. In a twist worthy of Joe Theisman’s 1985 tib-fib extravaganza, Brown straight-up vetoed that budget on Thursday morning. Oh, snap.
“If they [Republicans] continue to obstruct a vote,” the governor said, “we will be forced to pursue deeper and more destructive cuts to schools and public safety—a tragedy for which Republicans will bear full responsibility.” As if they care.
Call me crazy, but I felt like cheering. The outlook is grim, but it was already dismal, and something about it felt like the taunted kid finally rising up against the schoolyard bully, though we all know bullies tend to get away with their attacks. Then they grow up to be Republicans.
“Brown’s swift rejection of the budget proposal and his ensuing finger-pointing ruffled feathers in both parties and raised serious questions about where things go from here,” the Associated Press reported.
“I think the whole state should be asking, ‘Governor, you couldn’t get Republican votes for your Plan A. The majority party in the Legislature did their work to come up with a Plan B. You’ve now rejected it. What is your proposal?’” said Sen. Mark Leno, the Democrat from San Francisco.
Uh, rewind. Whose team are you on, Mark? The Republicans aren’t supporting anything anybody in your party proposes.
Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg, the Democrat from Sacramento, likened Brown’s veto to forcing a confrontation with the GOP, to which I say, Hallelujah!
“Success depends on articulating your first choice and being prepared and articulating the next best alternative,” Steinberg told reporters. I wonder how many “next best alternatives” he’d consider too many. This kind of deal-making has allowed the GOP to pull the national center so far to the right that middle ground is a losing proposition for everyone who isn’t Grover Norquist. Perhaps that seven-page ransom note was just a tool to get the Dems to keep coming up with the next best alternatives, which include many things Republicans really want anyway.
Currently, 52 percent of likely voters think the taxes should be extended. Brown should call that a mandate and use “everything within the law I will pull out of my gubernatorial briefcase” to make it happen. Good on Brown for going to the mat on this one; maybe he could go after the corporate loopholes in Prop. 13, now that he’s decided to be a bad-ass.
And the Legislature’s Democrats should quit bickering about whether Brown did a disservice to California in using his veto pen and stand with him in this stalemate. Because Brown is right. If a balanced budget is going to be a cuts-only budget—and it’s looking like it will be—then it needs to happen because the Republicans allowed it to happen.
Write to aaryn@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
