Rich Pedroncelli/AP - Gov. Jerry Brown discusses his approach to dealing with an estimated $25.4 billion state budget deficit during news conference where he released his $84.6 billion general fund state spending plan at the Capitol in Sacramento.
SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Jerry Brown looked tired and sounded frustrated. Leaving an impromptu meeting with his finance director on Tuesday afternoon in the Capitol, he paused briefly to assess budget negotiations that have reached a critical stage.
“We’re still climbing the hill, and I can’t see over the horizon,” he said, typically terse and oblique.
The negotiations involve the governor and five Republican state senators. He needs the votes of two of the five (plus two Republicans in the state Assembly) to win passage of a plan to eliminate a budget shortfall of more than $26 billion.
The package includes about $12 billion in spending cuts and $12 billion from the extension of several taxes due to expire. Brown has pledged to put any revenue proposals to a vote of the people. But to get it even that far, he needs Republican support in the legislature.
Asked what has hung up the negotiations, he said: “The Republican aversion to letting the people vote on a tax extension and Republican aversion to cutting the budget, like redevelopment. Republicans in California want to spend money, not cut the budget.”
That’s not quite the case. Republicans may be resisting some of Brown’s proposed cuts, which would affect most parts of the budget but leaving spending on K-12 education at current levels. But it is Brown’s tax proposals that are the most controversial with Republican legislators.
The Republican senators talking with Brown want the governor to make further concessions before they’ll agree to vote to put the taxes on a statewide ballot. They want a hard cap on spending, regulatory relief and reforms in public employee pensions. Brown was asked whether the negotiations have been stymied by his unwillingness to make concessions to the Republicans.
“We’re going to give a lot,” he said.
Brown declined to describe those concessions. Nor would he outline the demands Republicans are making. “There’s no term sheet yet,” he said. “There’s discussion, so we’re at the warm and fuzzy stage.”
Brown has staked his new governorship on finding a solution to the state’s deep and persistent budget problem. He won election last fall — returning to the governor’s office 36 years after he was first elected as the state’s chief executive — by assuring voters he could bring legislators together to solve the fiscal crisis. He has gotten close, but as his self-imposed deadline has come and gone, confusion surrounds the negotiations.
Brown has painted a dire picture of what will happen if Republicans reject the tax extensions. In a recent interview with veteran Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton, Brown described what would follow: “There’ll be an unleashing of left and right forces,” he said. “Everyone will come out fighting. California will become a battleground. ... It’ll be a war of all against all. The loser will be the people of California.”
The same could happen if Brown wins the right to put the tax plan before the voters and they reject it. Then California legislators would have to balance their budget solely with spending cuts. State Sen. Tom Berryhill, one of the Republican senators in talks with Brown, was quoted Tuesday with a prediction as calamitous as Brown’s.
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