Lawmakers stretching deadline to get record bond on June ballot

By Steve Lawrence, Associated Press
Tuesday, March 14, 2006

SACRAMENTO - Lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have given themselves one more day to try to put the largest bond measure in California history on the June ballot.

"If we do not get a bill by midnight Tuesday we are looking at November," Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez said Monday night after he put off a vote on a $49.3 billion bond bill that would provide money for highways, transit, schools, levees, parks and certain other public works projects.

Assembly Democrats said they were close to a deal Monday after a weekend of talks between the Republican governor and some legislative leaders.

But the Senate's leader said there were several problems with the bill, and Nunez acknowledged he was still short of putting together the two-thirds majority needed to get the measure out of the Assembly and to the Senate.

The proposal would put a $40.2 billion bond measure on the ballot this year and another $9.1 billion in school construction bonds on the ballot in 2008, said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Nunez.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata released copies of a three-page memo to his caucus that criticized the Assembly plan on a number of levels. Among other problems, he said the legislation contained too many dams for new reservoirs and not enough environmental protections.

The bill would authorize funding for two dams in Northern California at the insistence of Republicans, according to Perata's staff analysis. A Senate Democrat bond plan rejected on a party-line vote early Saturday included money for a single Southern California reservoir project, rebuilding Perris Dam in Riverside County.

Schwarzenegger and Republicans also inserted what Perata called "major new exemptions from the state's basic environmental protection law" that in some cases "effectively provides state bureaucrats with a 'blank check' on the environment."

He also objected that too much tax money would go to subsidize flood protection and said farmers and other large water users should bear more of the financial burden.

The Assembly plan did not included enough money for parks, Northern California highways and mass transit systems outside of Los Angeles, Perata also said in his memo.

Assembly Budget Committee chairman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, said the new proposal included some additional funding for reservoirs and "a little something" to scale back environmental reviews.

"But it's not the wholesale thing (Republicans) wanted," he added.

Friday was supposed to be the cutoff date for the Legislature to put measures on the June 6 ballot. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said there was some flexibility in that deadline, but he didn't specify how much.

Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Margita Thompson, initially said that work on the legislation had to be completed by Monday. Then Monday night she said the bill could be approved Tuesday and still make the June ballot.

Election officials need time to put the bond proposals on public display, solicit pro and con arguments for voter pamphlets, print those pamphlets and mail them to 12 million households by May 16, in addition to overseas voters.

"Our deadline has always been March 10," McPherson's spokeswoman Nghia Nguyen Demovic said. "We've stated that going beyond the March 10 deadline complicates the process."

Schwarzenegger made fixing the state's aging infrastructure, most of which was built during the 1950s and 1960s, his main issue for 2006 after voters rejected all four of the special election initiatives he campaigned for last fall.

The Republican governor initially asked for $68 billion in bonds to help pay for a 10-year, $222.6 billion infrastructure program, then later sought an additional $3.5 billion in bond funds for flood control.

Democrats countered with an offer to approve about $35 billion in bonds, saying the governor's plan would saddle the state with too much debt. They also wanted funding for some items that were not in the governor's proposal, including parks and affordable housing.

The two sides agreed to compromise on the amount of bonds they would ask voters to approve. Schwarzenegger also agreed to drop funding for prisons, jails and courthouses and add money for parks, natural resource programs, housing and transit.

The sides have stumbled on other provisions, however, leading to Friday's missed deadline and Monday's last-minute talks.

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Associated Press Writer Don Thompson contributed to this report.

On the Net: Read SB79 at http://www.assembly.ca.gov

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20060314-0037-ca-xgr-californiabonds.html