Final State Budget Goes To Governor, But Not Without Some Anger

With bipartisan cheers and jeers -- and few believing it's actually the end of this year's debate -- the Legislature has sent Gov. Jerry Brown a $167.6 billion budget that reflects private concessions to the governor's insistence on more-cautious economic projections.

The final votes, four days after sending Brown a more ambitious plan and three days after the announcement of a compromise, ensure a fiscal plan in place well before the beginning of the state's new fiscal year on July 1.

"The nature of compromise is that no one gets everything that he or she wants, and that's what's before us," said state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) in Friday's debate over the main amendments demanded by Brown.

In all, lawmakers said there were more than 100 changes to the 2015-16 budget approved by the Legislature on June 15. The most controversial were those that scale back or eliminate earlier spending decisions, a result of the Legislature abandoning tax revenue predictions that were $3.1 billion higher than estimates made by the governor.

While the more conservative revenue projections sparked a handful of Republican votes on parts of the budget in both houses, they also led to grumbling from some Democrats who were unhappy about the governor's refusal to increase funding for social service programs.

State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), who had championed a boost to welfare assistance for low-income families, sat silently in her seat on the Senate floor when asked to vote on the main budget revision.

“We as a state will continue to make history as the state in the nation with the highest child poverty rate," she had said in an impassioned floor speech just minutes earlier. "I don’t know how many of you are embarrassed or offended by that ... but the fact that there are 2 million California children who live in poverty, or deep poverty, is offensive to me.”

Republicans, meantime, blasted the deal struck by Brown and legislative Democrats to provide environmental review fast-tracking for a handful of projects, from efforts to build a new arena for the NBA's Golden State Warriors in San Francisco to groundwater replenishment efforts, while ignoring other broader needs -- specifically on the issue of the drought.

Others criticized the decision to remove new funding for developmental disability services, funding that would have gradually restored dollars that were cut during the depths of California's recession. Assembly Republicans tried to reinsert those provisions during Friday's floor debate but were blocked by majority Democrats.

"It's shameful that we are using the developmentally disabled individuals as a pawn to raise taxes in a special session," said Assemblywoman Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield).

Grove's comment reflects that funding for developmental disabilities, as well as long-term funding for Medi-Cal services and state infrastructure needs, will all be heard in special legislative sessions that run concurrently with normal state Capitol business over the next two months. The governor said on Monday that those sessions should include discussions of how to find new tax dollars for those programs.

Even some Democrats were skeptical of clearing the high legislative hurdle for additional taxes to help fund developmental disability needs.

"We have a final budget that's a crime," said Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose) in criticizing the lack of funding for those services.