Why We Can’t Let Republican Legislators Take the California State Budget Hostage for Their Narrow Agenda

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Fabian Nunez
Speaker Emeritus of the California Assembly

Late last summer I met with a dedicated group of healthcare professionals involved with the Sacramento Clinic Consortium. These were a group of people who worked in different clinics in the Sacramento area providing primary medical care, working to increase the chances for healthy pregnancies and successful births and helping keep seniors out of nursing homes. They are literally lifesavers for thousands of families.

The reason for our meeting last summer was because the clinics these health care providers worked in were in danger of shutting down because Senate Republicans were playing games with the budget. In particular, Republicans wanted to hold the state budget hostage to win an end-run around CEQA, California’s premier environmental law, which would have benefited oil companies and developers. Not only wasn’t that a budget issue, it wasn’t in California’s best interest and my fellow Democrats and I made it clear that it wasn’t going to happen.

In the “the more things change” department, my successor as Speaker of the Assembly, Karen Bass, is having to address the same kind of hostage taking from Republicans.

This year the rollbacks the Republicans are floating would damage our air quality, disadvantage working people, deny the disabled their full rights and increase the jeopardy the state is facing from global warming. Speaker Bass and the Democratic leadership have rightly and strongly made it clear that the Republicans actions aren’t just unrelated to the budget they are bad for California and will not happen on their watch. The more the public knows about the hostage taking, and the more they see what is really being pursued, the more I believe they will back up the Democrats strong response.

As the author of AB 32, California’s landmark law to combat global warming, I am particularly astounded by the Republicans wanting to delay implementation of AB 32. Delaying AB 32 would be extremely short sighted and exactly the kind of job-killing anti-competitiveness that Republicans usually rail against. When it comes to fighting global warming and boosting the green economy, California has the chance to be the same kind of world leader that we are in high-tech and biotech. If we don’t drop the ball. And the Republicans punting on AB 32 would be just another way of dropping the ball.