Do Republican Legislators Have a Real California Budget?

This, after dozens, if not hundreds of public budget subcommittee meetings and the conference committee meetings. Last year, as you may remember, Senator Perata, the President pro Tem of the Senate, in August, asked the Senate Republicans to draft a budget of their own and try to get some Democratic votes—at least to get something in print and out on the public table. The Senate Republicans never released a bill of their own.

It seems to me that we should have a public process and be able to see fully and clearly what each side is proposing. At least their publicly stated proposal in the kind of detail one gets in a budget bill.

If there is the need for private negotiations, perhaps a skilled mediator can help these parties come together. In legal mediations, California law has confidentiality clauses to encourage frank discussions—but a neutral mediator is involved to move the process along. At least that moves the process along.

Here’s a transcript from yesterday’s lunch that you can listen to, and a little from his answers to questions that are not on the tape and were made as he was leaving. It took a fair amount of persistent questioning to get this much. Be your own judge as to whether or not as of July 15, it is clear what the Republicans are proposing, as opposed to the Democratic plan that is at least in print.

Cogdill: “We believe we have to find a way to balance the budget this year without tax increases and we’re confident that we can do that.

“And a lot of the proposals we’ve put on the table, combinations thereof, and those things that are yet to be negotiated, could certainly lead us to that solutions, which we again think is much more favorable and appropriate than, you know, the $9 billion tax increase that has been proposed and the fact that the budget that’s come out of the conference committee reflects spending some $3 billion above where we were last year. …

“So the negotiations go on, we have met almost daily for the last three or four weeks and will continue to do that… I believe we are making some progress…”

Question: The Governor made comments about his frustration in the budget negotiations, saying “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink water.” So, will you drink?

Cogdill: Well,, we’re not going to drink any tax increases.

Again, we’re working very hard along with the other legislative leaders and I can only reiterate that we believe we’ve got the components to a budget deal on the table and we believe its going to take a considerable amount of work to get that combination to come together but we believe it’s there and that we will before too long.

Question: Have you laid out on the table all the things that have been talked about in private? And if you haven’t, why do you need to discuss things in private with the Big 4 and the Big 5 that you can’t talk about publicly”

Cogdill: Well, we’ve certainly laid out, as I mentioned, all of our ideas for reform in the number of areas that I’ve talked about. We have made available to the negotiations the issues relating to the spending reductions that we think would be appropriate, that we certainly would like to look at. And a lot of these too I think it’s appropriate to realize and a lot of the work that is being done by staff reflects this—is the fact that this is our idea—this is what we think we’re doing as related to spending in these areas. We’d like to further explore on that, so all of us can understand a little better and see if there is a way there to make some reductions.

So it gets difficult to say exactly here’s the amount of money in the different areas and all of that, as I say has been put before our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and there’s been quite a bit of discussion back and forth as to whether or not from their standpoint those things make sense. As I think you know, they’ve take a number of the suggestions that we have that showed up in the conference committee the other day. A lot of what we ‘re talking about earlier is reflected in the Governor’s documents…

None of these things, I think would be a surprise to anybody.

It is certainly not our goal to negotiate a budget in the media.

Question: I’m a little unclear about your numbers because what you are saying is that there is not going to be any revenue, any tax increase and we’ve got a deficit in excess of $15 billion. Then 15 billion has to come in cuts. In effect, you’re advocating cutting, since half of it is in education, 7 ½ billion in the education budget. I just don’t see how you can make the arithmetic work unless there’s some combination of cuts plus some additional revenue.

Cogdill: Well, like I said, there’s certainly a lot of things that are on the table and certainly we’ve looked at from the standpoint of revenues issues relating to different pots of money that are currently in place that could possibly be used. We believe there would have to be some kind of mechanism to pay that money back or at least to put that question possibly before the voters as it related to the usage of that money. But in order, again, to get a budget to come together this year we do believe that the moneys are out there to do that and would not involve or require a tax increase.

Question: To understand a “tax increase,” which is, to be fair, a bit of a term of art these days—what a tax increase is from your perspective—is a tax increase anything that is either not borrowing or not revenue neutral? Is everything else not considered a “tax increase?”

Cogdill: Uh, well, you know, I don’t think I can probably answer that without seeing specifics that you are talking about…

We’ve all seen in the past different proposals that are structured in such a way to be revenue neutral at the end of the day. Those are the kind of things that I am sure will be certainly considered as we move forward but I think that net neutrality has to come into play at some point. And again it’s about trying to get through a very difficult year and to make sure that we’ve got the reforms in place so that we stop this boom and bust cycle. …

Question: A temporary increase in revenue, is that off the table? Temporary taxes?

Cogdill: Again, anything would have to be determined to be revenue neutral over time, so it’s hard to determine what that structure would be. …

As Senator Cogdill was leaving:

Question: Senator, you talk about tapping into different funds. I assume that’s first 5, Prop 53. How are these not borrowing gimmicks?

Cogdill: Well, again, I think there’s a number of opportunities out there. I think you could legitimately characterize them as borrowing. …