Infighting plagues Calif. government

By Dan Walters

One symptom of California's political dysfunction is the ceaseless infighting among governmental entities over power and money, which are often synonymous.

Cities and counties joust with each other over shares of the property tax, they join forces to battle with the state government over its periodic raids on local government treasuries, while governors spar with the Legislature.

The state and local governmental structure's obsession with factional power struggles contributes heavily to its utter disconnection from the public's legitimate business ― thus encouraging single-purpose interest groups to bypass it altogether and use the ballot to advance their causes.

Some recent exchanges over territorial poaching among the state's highest governmental figures provide powerful evidence of that implosion.

Two years ago, Democrats and labor unions persuaded voters to eliminate the two-thirds vote requirement for state budgets, thus erasing Republican influence on fiscal policy. But to make that ballot measure more palatable, they included a proviso that legislators would lose their salaries if they didn't produce a budget by June 15 each year.

Last year was the first test of the new law and the Legislature flunked, producing a junked-up budget that Gov. Jerry Brown quickly rejected as unbalanced.

Thereupon, Controller John Chiang cut off legislators' salaries until they enacted a new budget.

Legislators fumed at losing two weeks' pay, and this year, their leaders sued Chiang, alleging that he lacked the power to enforce the law and that only the Legislature itself could determine whether it had complied.

"This is fundamentally an issue of separation of powers," Assembly Speaker John A. Perez declared.

Six days later, the Assembly took up a bill, sponsored by a band of rebel judges, that would give local courts more power over how state appropriations are to be spent. It would curtail the authority of the State Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts, which are headed by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye.

When it looked as if the bill would stall, Perez helped round up enough votes to push it out of the Assembly, enraging Cantil-Sakauye.

She complained bitterly, saying Perez's actions "really called into question" the meaning of separation of powers. "That line has been and very well could be blurred based on the conduct and the involvement that occurred not only leading up to the bill, but how it squeaked out ... of the Assembly. I don't know that anyone can stand tall after that process or claim a mandate after that process."

So Perez complains that Chiang is poaching on the Legislature's territory while Cantil-Sakauye says that Perez is intruding on hers.

It gives new meaning to the old saying about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Dan Walters is a columnist for Sacramento Bee. Reach him at dwalters@sacbee.com. For back columns, visit www.sacbee.com/walters.