Blame Sacramento game-playing, not junketing lawmakers
If you believe junketing state lawmakers are preventing the Legislature from convening a special session, we've got a bridge in Brooklyn for you to buy.
Question the merit of the junkets to Europe and Asia that some of our state legislators are now enjoying. The junkets and the traveling lawmakers deserve criticism. How can sightseeing trips (or as lawmakers call them, information gathering trips) to Europe and Asia fix California's huge problems?
And while it might be fun to slap around Kern's very own Republican state senator, Roy Ashburn, for reportedly being on the European trip, Ashburn isn't unique in his traveling ways. Before she left office last year, Kern's Democratic assemblywoman, Nicole Parra, could have been crowned "queen of the junkets."
While lawmakers use campaign funds to pay their way, it can be argued that they should be sticking closer to home and taking care of the people's business, including addressing such critical issues as budget deficits, a near-collapsing Delta and state water system, alternative energy development, prison over-crowding. The list goes on and on.
And the shady access that special interests have to legislators on these subsidized junkets is also just plain wrong.
But that said, the junket to Europe being enjoyed by seven state senators and to China and Korea by six other legislators shouldn't be blamed for delaying a special session to address a desperately needed fix of California's water system.
Blame politics for that. Blame lawmakers engaged in a game of chicken with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
On Sept. 8, Schwarzenegger vowed he would veto all the bills the Legislature sent him until lawmakers made sufficient progress on critical issues, including prison overcrowding, alternative energy and water. Before they adjourned on Sept. 11, legislators passed a prison reform bill that fell short of what was needed to relieve over-crowding and cut spending. They also passed an alternative energy bill that failed to meet the governor's expectations. Talks on water and fixing the Delta collapsed.
Reportedly more than 300 bills sit on the governor's desk awaiting his signature. Several hundred more still are making their way through the system. Schwarzenegger has until Oct. 12 to sign or veto bills, or they will automatically become law.
It is no coincidence that Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg decided to call senators back into session on Oct. 13, the day after Schwarzenegger's bill-signing deadline.
Bipartisan talks are ongoing to forge an agreement to fund Delta improvements and construction of above ground water storage and a canal to deliver water to thirsty Californians.
Will Schwarzenegger jeopardize these talks by following through with a foolish blanket veto threat? Already he has started crumbling by signing a veterans' bill and a bill to restore a health care program for poor children that was cut this summer. Likely Steinberg and others are betting he will continue to crumble.
Once again, lawmakers appear to have out-maneuvered the governor, who is too fast with his threats and too slow with his leadership.
