The State Senate on Tuesday
– 54 days after the official deadline – finally approved a
fiscal year 2007-08 budget.
Hollister – Many pundits and politicians, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saw Sen. Jeff Denham as the pivotal vote in getting the budget passed. But it turned out to be Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman, R-Tustin, who made the crucial switch.
The State Senate on Tuesday – 54 days after the official deadline – finally approved a fiscal year 2007-08 budget.
Denham, a Republican from Merced who represents San Benito County, described the $145 billion budget as the “most difficult” one he has worked on. The Republican senators who opposed the budget made a big difference, Denham said, because their resistance pressured the governor into committing to eliminate the $700 million deficit with his line-item veto powers.
“I’m certainly relieved to have the budget done,” Denham said. “But I think we needed to go much further.”
Two state budget issues with a local impact are funding for the Williamson Act and for a new county courthouse. Both items were temporarily removed from the budget at some point in the process, but both were included in the budget passed by the Senate.
County Administrative Officer Susan Thompson warned that nothing is certain yet because Schwarzenegger’s cuts won’t be announced until the end of the week.
“We know he’s going to blue-pencil a lot of things,” Thompson said. “(The Williamson Act and the courthouse) are both in the budget. We’re going to keep our fingers crossed that they stay intact.”
The Williamson Act allows farmers to pay lower property taxes if they pledge to preserve their land for agricultural use, and it compensates local governments for the lost taxes. In San Benito County, that compensation adds up to around $767,000 per year.
Schwarzenegger cut all Williamson Act funding in the budget revision he released in May. Local farmers have said eliminating the money would pressure them to sell their land to developers.
“I know the governor’s been getting an awful lot of calls … so let’s hope it worked,” Thompson said.
While the budget languished, no state dollars were released for health care, college financial aid and other spending areas. San Benito County Health and Human Services Director Kathy Flores has said the county’s health programs have continued but they aren’t getting any reimbursements from the sate.
San Benito County’s Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, said she’s “very happy” that the budget has been approved and that it includes money for the Williamson Act, a new courthouse and rural crime prevention.
“This is essentially the budget that the Assembly passed on July 20,” she said.
But Caballero thinks the delay has shown there’s something wrong with the system. There are only three states in the country that require a two-thirds vote to pass the budget, she said. And of those, only California gives its governor line-item veto power.
“We spent so much time working on compromises, and now one person can blue-line whatever he wants,” Caballero said. “We need to look very carefully at changing the system.”
Caballero isn’t the only one who wants things to go differently next year. Denham, who expects to run for lieutenant governor in 2010, said he plans to introduce a bill that would prohibit the Senate from missing the budget deadline again.
“We need to put our heads together,” he said.
This year’s budget showdown led to the third-latest California budget in the past 30 years.
One of the crucial, last-minute compromises that moved the budget forward was a moratorium on global warming-related lawsuits against projects funded by the state bonds approved in 2006. Attorney General Jerry Brown created a stir among Republicans when he threatened legal action against cities and counties that failed to compensate for increased greenhouse gas emissions caused by local growth. Brown said the moratorium won’t affect his plans.
