Republican State Senators Holding up the California Budget Should Get Their Facts Straight on California Environmental Laws and

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

There have been particularly galling misstatements of fact and exaggerations about the actions of California Attorney General Jerry Brown in enforcing California's environmental laws, the latest sticking point in the fog of war that the cabal of 14 Republican California State Senators is using as their excuse in not providing the single vote needed to pass our overdue state budget. We'll deal with the facts on what Brown is doing, but first, let's look at the larger picture.

The principle at stake here is also not inconsequential. It is really about the rule of law and the California Constitution. Lost in all of this is that the voters of California, by a landslide margin larger elected Jerry Brown to be the chief law enforcement office of the state. Brown won by a margin larger than even Governor Schwarzenegger. It is his constitutional duty to enforce our laws, including the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which has been on the books since Governor Ronald Reagan signed it in 1970. Under our system of government, the legislature passes laws, the Governor signs them, and the Attorney General is the state's lawyer charged with upholding them and the courts make decisions where there are disputes about the application of laws.

If you disagree with a law, get a majority of the legislature to amend it and the Governor to sign the change. If you don't, the law is there to be obeyed. We, the people elected the Attorney General to uphold the law, not 14 state senators, not one of whom voted for AB 32, the landmark law on greenhouse gases and who probably would not have voted for CEQA.

We should not establish the principle that a small minority can hold up the state budget and demand that laws they do not like, passed by the majority and signed by the governor, not be enforced.

Republican Senator Cogdill, who while in the Assembly voted against AB 32, recently sent his constituents a letter that contained the following: