No Budget Hostages

Environmental, consumer and labor leaders came together this week to call on legislative leaders to resist efforts to use California’s budget crisis to roll back vital safeguards:

June 1, 2009

Assemblywoman Karen Bass
Speaker, California State Assembly
State Capitol, Room 219
Sacramento, CA 95814
Senator Darrell Steinberg

President pro Tempore, California State Senate
State Capitol, Room 205
Sacramento, CA 95814


Dear Speaker Bass and President pro Tempore Steinberg:

In addressing this year’s budget crisis, you will be faced with heart wrenching decisions that will impact the lives of every Californian. The budget solutions that have been proposed balance the budget entirely on the backs of the most vulnerable in our state. We understand the magnitude and difficulty of the task you face. As you struggle to craft a budget solution, we urge you to reject any attempts to leverage fundamental policy protections.

In every legislative session, business groups sponsor bills to take away the eight-hour day and weaken basic environmental standards. These bills do not make it through the Legislature because they are bad for workers and bad for California. But some are not satisfied by the results of the democratic process and seek to use the urgency of the budget process to leverage policy changes they cannot otherwise win. Rolling back the eight-hour day, taking away meal periods, scaling back environmental protections, or contracting out services without any standards do nothing to balance our budget. Instead, they cut worker pay, jeopardize health and safety, and cause irreparable harm to our communities. We cannot allow our core values as a state to be used as bargaining chips.

Proposals to strip away basic labor and environmental standards hurt the very people who are already being harmed most by the budget. Working people and the poor face drastic cuts to healthcare and social services. These are the same workers who will see their wages cut from an overtime takeaway, will lose their lunch breaks in the face of employer coercion, and will see their neighborhoods polluted if environmental regulations are reversed. In the midst of record unemployment, reckless contracting out simply means more layoffs with less oversight for our tax dollars. These layoffs will hit low-wage workers the hardest and will exacerbate the problem by trapping more families in poverty.

For these reasons, we urge you to reject policy rollbacks as part of any budget deal.

Sincerely,

Angie Wei
Legislative Director, California Labor Federation

Bill Magavern
Director, Sierra Club California

Warner Chabot
CEO, California League of Conservation Voters

Christine Spagnoli
President, Consumer Attorneys of California

How Does The Budget Framework Impact Environmental Protections?

The budget agreement reached by legislative leaders and the governor includes $15.8 billion in spending cuts, $14.3 billion in new taxes (including a 12 cent increase in the gas tax, 1% increase in sales tax, and .5% increase vehicle license fee, amongst others), and $10.9 billion in borrowing. Assuming that the proposal passes the Senate and Assembly this weekend – and passage is still in doubt -- portions of the deal will need to go to the voters for approval, likely on a special election later this year.

Given these serious funding cuts, and the myriad demands by Republican legislators to suspend or delay environmental protections, how did the environment fare in the final deal?

Smoke from diesel off-road vehicles is a major source of pollution, and delaying these new protections prevents us from cleaning up this serious threat to public health.

The biggest financial hit is to transit funding. The proposal suspends all state support for local transit for the remainder of 2009, as well as next year. The program remains, but has been totally de-funded. This brings the transit funding cuts from the last two budgets to about $3 billion.

Department of Fish and Game takes a $30 million dollar hit as a “loan” to the general fund. This could have the effect of jeopardizing an additional $30 million in federal matching funds.

Exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act, and truncated permit review, for eight road building projects. Although the worst of the proposed road building exemptions were eliminated, several smaller projects were included in the final deal.

The California Conservation Corp, a very popular and successful program that had been proposed for elimination, was saved.

The Williamson Act for preservation of agricultural land was restored.

Perhaps just as notable as what is included in the budget is how many of the Republican demands did not end up in the budget, including:

-Hobbling the Air Resources Board with red tape;
-Preventing the use of CEQA to address greenhouse gas pollution;
-Weakening protections from pesticides; and
-Far more sweeping exemptions for road construction projects.

While this was a terrible way to develop a budget – by 5 people in total secrecy – there is one other upside. The proposed budget framework would cover the remainder of this year as well as next fiscal year (2009-10). So we will not have a repeat of this hostage-taking scenario later this summer.

Although there is a lot not to like about this budget deal, and much of the next few years will need to focus on undoing some of the damage, we appreciate Senator Steinberg and Speaker Bass’ extraordinary efforts to minimize the damage, given an untenable situation.

Reform of the budget process – especially the elimination of the 2/3 requirement for passing budgets and taxes -- is desperately needed to prevent this kind of fiscal blackmail from happening again.