[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

While there is a good deal of coverage of the budget and cuts proposed by the Governor for the next fiscal year to deal with the estimated $14.5 million deficit, the more immediate cuts to take effect March 1 out of the current budget to deal with a $3.3 billion shortfall needs to be looked at now—and carefully. In these immediate cuts are cuts in disaster assistance, programs for deaf children, children with severe mental and physical problems, adoptions, enforcement of labor laws and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), emergency preparation, and veterans retirement and programs for vets with memory problems. And these are just a few that I detail at the end of this article.

Next year’s budget will sort itself out in a process that will go on until June. It will be painful. It is vitally important to the lives of Californians and our future. It needs to be analyzed, debated, and its real life impacts need to be communicated to the voting public and all in the state early—so that the choices made reflect our values and priorities.

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Gary A. Patton
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

The State Senate ALMOST passed a budget last night. Republican State Senator Abel Maldonado voted “yes,” along with all the Democratic Party Senators. One more Republican vote would have put the budget over the top. However, that “one more vote” was lacking.

Does anybody really know WHY Republican Senators (Mr. Maldonado now excepted) are willing to shut down child care centers and otherwise bring state and local government to a halt? Along with a handful of other environmental advocates I was at the State Capitol last night, and here’s what we found out:

Senate Republicans have been holding up the budget because they want the Legislature to amend the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), to eliminate any consideration of global warming impacts during the normal environmental review process. No Democratic Senators have been willing to do that, and this has apparently been a real “deal breaker” for the Republican Senators. Amazing as it may seem, since CEQA has nothing to do with the budget, Republican members of the State Senate (Mr. Maldonado now excepted) are refusing to vote for the budget unless CEQA is gutted, with respect to global warming.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

The play here by California Republican State Senators to tie the hands of our elected state Attorney General, Jerry Brown in enforcing California's laws in requiring the consideration of global warming under the decades long established California Environment Quality Act reveal a level of sleaze and hypocrisy that just doesn't pass the smell test. It speaks volumes for why they are in a tiny minority of the Senate on the substance of what they are trying to do, the procedure of inserting this into the budget at the last minute they are trying to use, the level of personal attacks they are making on the Attorney General, and the work they are doing for special interest big time contributors.

The chief hypocrisy here is that these Republican Senators are trying to block AB 32, California's landmark greenhouse gas law that passed last year and that every single one of them voted against. Check the record: 14 of them who in the Senate voted against the law and Senator Dave Cogdill, who was in the Assembly at the time voted against it in that body.