Photo: Getty Images

It's no surprise that the choice of Maldonado by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger faces a tougher, much more uncertain road in the Assembly than in the Senate. Last week's quick hearing before the Senate Rules Committee made it clear that, in the words of one Democratic senator, the "comity" of the upper house is going to prevail in elevating the senator from the Central Coast to the post.

Today, the lower house drama began to play out, with three Democratic assemblymembers summoning reporters to discuss the various reasons they plan to say 'no' to Maldo.

The charge was led by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara), who handed reporters a long list of bills in which he says Maldonado has voted the wrong way through the years (you can see the whole list provided by Nava's office here.) That list includes everything from social to environmental issues and beyond. It should be noted, though, that some of the bills on the list found Maldonado on the same side… pro or con… as even some Democrats.

"This is really a promotion," Nava told reporters. "And if you're going to be promoted, in most circumstances, you need to have outstanding performance. We don't have that with Senator Maldonado."

But the other two Democratic assemblymembers focused their opposition to the Maldo nomination elsewhere — on the calendar.

"We should let the voters choose," said Assemblymember Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana), noting that the 2010 race for the job of 'lite guv' is just around the corner. The leave-it-vacant argument was seconded by Assemblymember Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia), who also added that Maldonado's deal making during the 2009 budget debate amounted to "blackmail."

It's worth noting that all three men are part of the Legislative Latino Caucus, which met last week to discuss the Maldonado nomination. The chair of that caucus, Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-LA), voted in favor of the Maldo appointment last week. But Assemblymember Mendoza told me this morning that the caucus of Latino legislators has not taken a formal vote on whether to support, or oppose, the nomination.

That's an awful lot of differing criticisms. Add to it today's announcement that the conservative California Republican Assembly is urging a 'no' vote, as well. And it's possible that such a cacophony could ultimately lead a majority of the 80-member Assembly to reject Maldonado's nomination (and there's new word that it will, in fact, go to the floor for a full vote).

For his part, Maldonado spent the morning with the governor at an event in San Luis Obispo, in the heart of Maldo's state senate district. His hearing before the Assembly Rules Committee — originally scheduled for this afternoon — has been pushed back until tomorrow.

Meantime, the lawmakers at today's event highlighted an interesting twist to all of this — namely, that there is someone running the shop in the office of California's lieutenant governor, long after John Garamendi packed his bags and headed to Congress.

Mona Pasquil, who served as Garamendi's chief of staff during his time as 'lite guv,' is administratively serving as the person in charge. Communications director Beth Willon says while Pasquil certainly can't become governor or sit in the LG's chair as a University of California regent, for example, she can — and is– serving as the third voting member of the State Lands Commission in the absence of an official lieutenant governor.

By the way, one great example of that absence… can be seen on the LG's official website lately.

First up: the high drama of Wednesday's confirmation hearing for Abel Maldonado to be California's next 'lite guv.' Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I also examine the wild week in the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, complete with nasty jabs and a political 911 call to the cops… and, a political web video that's all the talk.

Photo: Getty Images

Those are some of the things being said about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as this election year kicks off… not by Democrats, but by his fellow Republicans. And it may be just the beginning.

A great case in point comes today with the first of what will likely be a lot of TV ads from GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who is on her way to breaking all records for campaign spending in California.

Whitman's kickoff commercial is mostly a statement of principles about her leadership abilities. But embedded not too far below the surface are comments about the leadership qualities that have existed so far — including, one would assume those of Schwarzenegger.

"People are scared to death that California cannot be fixed," Whitman says, then delivering this thinly veiled zinger: "The most important thing that the next governor of California has to do is actually deliver the goods."

As in… the current governor hasn't delivered the "goods"?

This isn't the first time the current GOP front runner has taken aim at the guy in the corner office. It began during last year's budget deficit debate and has continued from there, albeit fairly quietly. The most notable clash, so far, has come over Whitman's frequent calls to trim the state employee workforce.

For his part, Whitman gubernatorial rival Steve Poizner has been a little more opaque about the Schwarzenegger role in California's crisis. But not much.

In his December raison d’être web video, the insurance commissioner put it this way: "Weak leadership, and wrong-headed ideas have transformed California from the envy of the world into a ruthless job killer."

Weak leadership from… who?

And it's not just governor wannabes taking their shots. This week's oddball web video from U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was aimed at the record of opponent Tom Campbell. But the biggest target Campbell had on his back in the ad seemed to be from his time serving as Schwarzenegger's budget director in 2005.

The ominous narrator describes that budget… one with Schwarzenegger's signature on it, mind you, not Campbell's, thusly: "A budget so bloated with increased ongoing spending commitments and borrowing that it literally set the stage for the recent decline of California."

Yowza.

Of course, beating up the incumbent is nothing new. Schwarzenegger himself did an awfully good job at that in 2003. But these are Republicans taking shots at what, in most states, would be the Republican standard bearer (party activists don't see him as that, as you might know).

For their part, the Schwarzenegger camp isn't buying it.

"Voters are accustomed to politicians and aspiring politicians making generic statements," said Schwarzenegger political adviser Adam Mendelsohn. "They tune it out. I think they should tell voters about themselves before spending millions on generalities and platitudes."

It's worth noting that this is only February, and the campaigns are still finding their footing. But California's problems are hard to ignore, and blaming incumbents is almost second nature in politics. It will be interesting to see whether the Schwarzenegger attacks continue, and how the governor himself handles them as election day draws near.

But what we didn't know was how emotional the 42-year-old would be, or how often Democrats would seek to push the first generation American on whether his record as a legislator has helped, or hurt, others who aspire to rise from similar meager beginnings.

In other words…it was a budget fight.

Maldonado, on a 4-0 vote of the Senate Rules Committee, now moves on to face a vote of the full Senate as soon as next week. But getting there meant having to bear the brunt of Democratic questions that hinted many of his legislative votes have hurt the state's most vulnerable citizens.

At one point, Maldo was asked by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-LA) how he's able to "straddle" the many contradictions that come with trying to live in the political gray areas between left and right.

"It's not easy," he said matter of factly.

And for today, that's probably what majority Democrats wanted… an acknowledgement from a newly prominent Republican that actions, especially those on budget items, have consequences.

After an emotional beginning (and a voice that trembled nervously throughout), Democrats honed in on asking Maldonado to justify actions that have, in some cases, resulted in large spending cuts on vital services while steadfastly refusing all tax increases before last February. And even then, Maldo demanded that a $2 billion hike in the gas tax be killed before he'd vote for the deficit deal.

Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg laid out a list of some of the cuts that Democrats say might have been avoided in 2009 — from job training for poor families to breast cancer screenings, county child welfare social workers, and beyond.

"How do you balance that sort of an impact," said Steinberg, "with the important objective to not hurt people's pocketbooks any more than we have to?"

"It hurts me to cut the safety net," replied Maldonado. But the senator also said that stimulating the economy was, and is, a priority… and that a balanced approach (read: no more taxes) is important.

"It was the best thing we could do," said the nominee about the 2009 budget deal. To which the Senate leader shot back: "I believe we could've done a little better."

And then there was this from Steinberg: "What's missing is a debate about the cost of those decisons versus other decisions."

Maldonado was also pushed for an opinion on a Democratic plan for a new 3% withholding requirement on independent contractors ("something we ought to look at," said Maldo); his position on Governor Schwarzenegger's $20 billion deficit solution (said he thinks the economy will surprise everyone this spring); additional tuition hikes at UC and CSU campuses ("I don't see how anyone" can pay more, he said); and a plan he once co-authored to allow undocumented immigrant students to pay resident tuition (times were better and the state had money back then, said Maldo).

Maldonado also told the committee he opposes efforts to allow the state budget to be passed on a simple majority vote.

Almost all of this, it should be noted, focuses on the nuts and bolts of what legislators do, not the lieutenant governor (with higher ed being an exception, given the LG serves as a UC regent).

And while budget positioning in the public's mind is the most logical reason all of this came up, it's not crazy to consider something else: a lieutenant governor may not deal with these issues, but another top elected official does… a job into which Maldonado may be asked to step.

"We all know," said Steinberg, "the lieutenant governor can become governor."

The Republican line of questioning came from only one committee member, Sen. Bob Dutton (R-Rancho Cucamonga) because the other Reep on the dais — Sen. Sam Aanestad (R-Grass Valley) — will be Maldonado's opponent in the June lieutenant governor primary, and decided to recuse himself from talking and voting in today's hearing. Dutton only asked a few questions about the economy, and later said while he probably only agrees with Maldo "50% of the time," he would nonetheless vote to send the nomination to the full Senate.

That Republican reluctance is likely to grow only louder in the days leading up to a formal confirmation vote, with staunch conservatives calling Maldo out on just about everything — especially last year's vote to raise taxes.

Several sources say Maldonado's confirmation chances in the full Senate are looking good, though nothing in politics is a certainty. But the real question may be what about the Assembly? They, too, can reject a nominee by a simple majority vote. And in the larger lower house, Maldonado needs twice as many supporters if he wants to pack his boxes and move down to that vacant office on the Capitol's first floor.

Abel Maldonado, the state senator who tomorrow finds himself sitting in his confirmation hearing to be the next 'lite guv,' has said twice in as many days that he opposes the current offshore drilling proposal known as Tranquillon Ridge.

If Maldo gets to add the title 'Lt. Governor' to his name, his position on the proposal is key to the project's fate. That's because the state's second highest ranking official is one of three members of the State Lands Commission, the government entity that is the first hurdle for any new offshore oil drilling project to clear.

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down with the Republican in his Capitol office for an extended interview, portions of which will air tomorrow morning on The California Report. We talked a lot about the so-called T-Ridge project, and Maldo repeated many of those comments this afternoon in a conference call with the Capitol press corps.

It's important to remember that the senator's home turf is Santa Maria in northern Santa Barbara County — the same part of the county in which oil from the T-Ridge project off Platform Irene would be piped and processed.

And in our chat yesterday, he was crystal clear about the plan to allow a new drilling operation into state waters from the platform, which sits just over the boundary in federal waters.

"I think it's a non-starter where it's at," he said.

Like so many critics of the proposal, Maldonado cites the very same red flag raised by both Controller John Chiang and former lieutenant governor — now Congressman John Garamendi — during a State Lands Commission hearing in 2009: that the touted 'win-win' nature of the proposal is unenforceable.

The plan, crafted by both oil company Plains Exploration & Production (PXP) and the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center — says that in exchange for new drilling in the T-Ridge oilfield, PXP will later cease all operations on Platform Irene and three other nearby oil platforms (plus some other benefits like land donation and financial help for local climate change efforts).

But Maldonado points out that the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) — and not the state — controls the ultimate fate of those platforms. "How could you vote for that?" he said in our interview on Monday. "There is no assurance that those platforms will come down."

Maldo's position on the project hadn't been crystal clear until this week. While he voted against it during last summer's budget debate, that was a version of the project that authorized the governor to sidestep the State Lands Commission… a version to which even the enviros who struck the deal were opposed.

And his position puts him squarely at odds with his proclaimed "soulmate," the guy who nominated him for the new job — Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor is strongly pushing for approval of the T-Ridge project and said last week that his support is largely driven by the fact that royalties from the project could help clean up the state's budget mess.

Maldonado's emphatic 'no' is, of course, only on the project as it now stands; environmentalists say they are working on changes which they believe may assuage some of the concerns. But his feelings about offshore drilling in general seem came out in our chat.

"I don't like those platforms," said Maldonado in talking about the many oil operations that dot the horizon along Highway 101. "My grandpa used to say, 'They don't make coastline anymore, so protect what we have.'"

It's also worth noting that the nominee had some choice words in our interview for the environmentalists who struck the deal, after the veteran journalists at Calbuzz recently published the heretofore confidential T-Ridge agreement — an agreement that includes up to $100,000 in reimbursement of costs for the environmental advocates. "I have great concerns about that," said Maldonado in our interview.

His opposition to T-Ridge will surely be unwelcome news to the executives at PXP, who have been pushing hard for the project's approval in the wake of Garamendi's departure from the LG job. And make no mistake, there's big money at stake. This morning, a pair of Wall Street analysts called me — they didn't want their names used with this story — to ask about Maldonado's chances of being confirmed. The money managers said they believe the approval of T-Ridge would alone add as much as $7 to each share of PXP stock.

Some Democrats have been attempting to use the uncertainty of Maldonado's position on the T-Ridge project as reason that legislative leaders should reject his nomination. For now, though, that line of attack seems to have fallen flat.

Below you can hear the unedited segment of our interview in which Maldonado talks about the Tranquillon Ridge project.

Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I check out the latest poll numbers on the contests for the the U.S. Senate and governor, and examine the slowly reheating budget battles under the state Capitol dome.

We also take a quick peek at next week's big drama: the confirmation hearing for lieutenant governor designate Abel Maldonado.

It also says something else: the same Californians who want to be in charge of fixing their government don't seem to have a clue how it works.

The poll from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California takes a pretty broad look at how folks feel about their government and the road ahead for 2010.

Much of what they told PPIC is no surprise, but still important: 75% say the state's budget woes are a "big problem," and 74% say things in California are headed in the "wrong direction."

And, not surprisingly to those of us who read these polls, large majorities of Californians want to protect funding for K-12 education… while a similar number are willing to cut funding for prisons.

But here's where this week's PPIC poll seems to offer some new — and troubling– insight: a lot of people have no idea how state government spends their tax dollars.

When given four areas of state government from which to choose, 49% of those surveyed said that "most spending in the state budget" goes to prisons. Health and human services came in second (24%), followed by K-12 education (16%) and then higher education (5%). Six percent (thankfully) admitted they don't know.

Yes, 49% think that most of the $85 billion general fund goes to prisons… when, in reality, it's less than 10 cents of every dollar spent out of the general fund this year.

That means almost half of all those surveyed have no idea that more than 41 cents of every dollar in the general fund this year is going to K-12 schools — the single largest piece of the budget pie.

(The correct order, by the way, in the 2009-10 Budget Act: K-12 education at $35 billion, health and human services at $25 billion, higher education at $10.5 billion, and corrections at $8.2 billion.)

This bit of fiscal ignorance seems to explain so many other opinions — not just in the PPIC survey, but from almost all recent surveys about the budget actions Californians either favor or oppose.

But sticking with this PPIC poll…

60% think the state could cut spending and still provide the same level of services, but 66% would pay higher taxes if it means protecting K-12 education.

58% want to protect K-12 education from cuts, but 37% say the budget crisis could be solved mostly through spending cuts.

One can certainly forgive most Californians for not knowing every intricacy of how their state government works; after all, they have lives to live and aren't quite the policy and political junkie that some of us are.

But here's the rub. In this same survey, 72% of voters said that "reform of the state budget process, both in terms of changing the way the state taxes and spends money" should be done at the ballot box and not at the state Capitol.

So should we assume that most folks want to be in charge but don't know enough to be in charge? And if so, where does the fault lie for having an electorate that's so uneducated about the budget process?

If nothing else, this cognitive dissonance seems especially noteworthy in a year that many think will be full of government reform proposals on the ballot. Should these reforms be approved by voters, will those same voters have any idea what they're really going to get?

That's about as simple as it gets in Capitol budget terms, and that's the bottom line of the Legislative Analyst's Office after examining Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's novel proposal to link funding for prisons with funding for the University of California and California State University systems.

And the LAO report (read it here) ends with a zinger: "It is an unnecessary, ill-conceived measure that would do serious harm to the budget process."

The pairing of these two very different parts of the state budget was first suggested by Schwarzenegger in his State of the State speech on January 6. The pitch was simple: the state should be forced to spend more general fund dollars on higher education than on prisons.

"What does it say about a state that focuses more on prison uniforms than caps and gowns?" the governor said in his speech. "It simply is not healthy."

The budget odd couple left almost everyone scratching their heads, though on its face it's pretty simple: in four years time, there would be a cap on prison spending at 7% of the state's general fund and a corresponding floor for the UC and CSU systems, combined, of at least 10% of general fund revenues.

But that wouldn't be so simple because, as the LAO points out, about 9.5% of current GF revenues are going to prisons and only about 5.7% to UC/CSU.

To get to the magic numbers, the governor's proposal would require any cuts in prison spending — beginning next year — to be transferred dollar for dollar to higher ed. If that swap of cash doesn't get the UC/CSU piece of the pie up to 10% by July 2014, lawmakers would have to use "other available resources" to make up the difference.

It's worth noting that this setup procedure — cutting prison costs even beyond current levels and possibly forcing cuts in other programs to pay for the proposal — hasn't been widely talked about, and has been completely absent from any public mention of the plan by Governor Schwarzenegger. It's also worth noting that while the governor's advisers have released an overview of the proposed constitutional amendment, it has yet to be drafted in bill form or to have an author(s) in the Legislature.

Another unnoticed provision, one that lead LAO author Steve Boilard calls a "huge loophole," is the fact that the costs of operating any new prison built under 2007's AB 900 would be exempt from the 7% cap. Granted, AB 900 remains a work in progress… but if things move forward, many of the same cost drivers that have made prison expenses skyrocket would be free to keep on going up, grandfathered out of the governor's amendment to the state constitution.

Other concerns from the LAO about the Schwarzenegger proposal? Several. On the education side, the analysts say it fails to take into account the actual budgets of the UC and CSU systems — budgets that are currently more dependent on student fees than they were back in the era where they accounted for at least 10% of the general fund (as the Guv is proposing). Another issue… one that's particularly galling to some in the education community… is that the proposal doesn't include California's community colleges under its definition of "higher education." The CCC system gets general fund dollars as part of the Proposition 98 guarantee that also covers K-12 education. But community colleges, notes the LAO, are "a key component of state higher education spending."

Other flaws the LAO found in the proposal include its lack of guarantee that extra higher ed cash will actually go toward any "public benefit"; the fact that it "arbitrarily" caps prison spending "irrespective of the cost pressures" that are often driven by the courts and state sentencing laws; and the ominous fact that the measure, combined with Prop 98, would "constrain spending choices (by elected officials) for over half of the state budget."

The LAO report may only increase the sense around the Capitol that the proposal (which would ultimately have to be ratified by the voters on perhaps the November ballot) is on life support. The only full throated support is coming from UC President Mark Yudof who has called it "bold and visionary." Of course, Yudof is also asking lawmakers for an extra $913 million for the UC system.

Photo: Sacramento Press Club

"Instead of having education continue taking a hit and the prison spending goes up, let's go and flip it around," said Schwarzenegger in his appearance yesterday at the Sacramento Press Club. The governor said his plan would force the prisons to be more "cost effective" — a reference, no doubt, to the language in his constitutional amendment that would allow the state to venture more into the world of privatized prisons.

But in the final analysis, some may wonder if — in an era where 'ballot box budgeting' is panned by almost everyone — is it wise to add yet another mandate to one of the longest state constitutions in America?

Photo: Sacramento Press Club

It was delivered this afternoon at an appearance before the Sacramento Press Club, and it may help explain not just some of Schwarzenegger's most impressive victories… but also why so many parts of the political spectrum have grown disenchanted with what have seemed like multiple course corrections.

The comments came in a question I asked about the offshore oil drilling proposal known as Tranquillon Ridge, a project whose upfront $100 million royalty to the state became part of the governor's budget solution in 2009. The proposal — which also includes promises to mothball several existing platforms off the Central Coast — has split some environmental groups. And although it was rejected by the Legislature last summer, it's resurfaced in the Guv's latest budget plan.

But it's not a proposal that Schwarzenegger has specifically talked about, hence my interest in getting him on the record. Furthermore, the T-Ridge drilling plan has raised questions with some enviros about Schwarzenegger's commitment to being a 'green' guv.

That's best exemplified by the above YouTube video, where environmentalists pasted together some of the governor's many statements in the past that denounced any new oil drilling off the California coast.

Schwarzenegger today admitted that this support for the plan is "budget driven," and portrayed the proposal as one with which everyone is happy.

"It will be satisfying so many ends," he said. "First of all, we get less dependent on foreign oil. Second, we will get extra revenues. The environmentalists are happy, business is happy, so everyone is happy, so why not go ahead with it?"

That understates the environmental opposition, which included the original backers during Schwarzenegger's 2009 effort to sidestep the normal process for approving the project.

But elsewhere in the answer was something larger… a hint at what might be the fundamental truth about his time as governor. "I think that it is when you are in an emergency, a fiscal emergency," said Schwarzenegger, "I think that you look beyond of [sic] just your principles."

The governor went on to say the budget isn't really a reflection of his "priorities," but rather his single priority: "to live within our means."

Nonetheless, the notion that one's principles should, or can, be sometimes set aside seems to explain many of Governor Schwarzenegger's zigs and zags over the years. And I asked him the logical follow-up: if some of his principles are flexible, then why not all of them? The answer, while a bit meandering, eventually came back to the state's finances.

"The key thing is the principle of living within our means and not continue spending money that we don't have," he said. "That's a promise I made in 2003 when I was elected, and that's a promise I want to keep."

Setting aside for a moment his record on that issue, it bears mentioning just a few of the issues on which the governor's path hasn't been so straight and narrow through the years: education, the environment, tax increases, local government funding… and perhaps more. It's little wonder that Schwarzenegger has, in so many ways, become what's been called a "party of one" in California politics.

But if balanced state budgets are at the core of his political legacy (and he again today denied thinking about that legacy), how should one view the current state fiscal mess? Or, what should be made of this past weekend's Field Poll that found 30% of those surveyed think the state post-Arnold will be in the same shape it was pre-Arnold… while 59% say the state will be in worse shape once Schwarzenegger leaves office.

Audio of the entire comment from the governor, from my original question to the follow-up, can be heard below:

]]> http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2010/01/25/schwarzenegger-look-beyond-ones-principles/feed/ 2 http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2010/01/22/podcast-polls-potshots/ http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/2010/01/22/podcast-polls-potshots/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:00:48 +0000 John Myers http://blogs.kqed.org/capitalnotes/?p=4165 Less policy. More politics. That's this week's Capital Notes Podcast in a nutshell.

Two big polls came out this week examining the race for governor and the race for the United States Senate, with the gubernatorial survey out just this morning. Capitol Weekly's Anthony York and I examine the numbers and what they mean for the beginning of the 2010 slugfest.

We also discuss Governor Schwarzenegger's big trip to the nation's capital this week and the verbal jabs from both his team and Democrats.