By Andy Furillo -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The flame flickered low on an infrastructure bond deal Tuesday, with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez saying the package is likely headed for a vote on the November ballot, rather than the June 6 primary.
"We're back to square one," Núñez said in a Los Angeles radio interview.
Senate Democratic and Republican leaders, meanwhile, met during the day with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which prompted gubernatorial spokeswoman Margita Thompson to say the administration remains "cautiously optimistic" that as long as people are talking, a deal still could be struck to put something on the ballot in June.
Núñez, D-Los Angeles, sought clarification from Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on the legislative deadline to submit a measure for a June vote.
McPherson initially set the deadline for last Friday but has since suggested the March 10 date was flexible.
In a response letter to Núñez, McPherson said the Legislature and the governor can go beyond the deadline if they agree to shorten the public display period for the ballot arguments from 10 days to eight and if they agree to pay for a supplemental ballot pamphlet.
Perhaps signaling the fading prospects for a bond deal, Núñez planned to attend a University of California Board of Regents meeting today in Los Angeles. Schwarzenegger also made other arrangements, scheduling an appearance at the California After School Summit in Sacramento.
No bond votes were scheduled Tuesday, a day after Núñez called the Assembly together for an evening session but sent lawmakers home without taking any action amid blanket Republican opposition and some internal grumbling among Democrats over an amended infrastructure plan.
Schwarzenegger opened the political year in his State of the State speech by calling for a $222 billion, 10-year infrastructure plan that would be funded by $68 billion in publicly approved bonds to upgrade the state's highways, levees and schools, among other things.
He subsequently increased the bonding level in his plan to $71 billion.
Democrats later agreed among themselves to a $48.6 billion plan that would be paid over four years and include more funding for transit than envisioned by Schwarzenegger, as well as programs for low-cost housing and urban parks.
Legislative Republicans, however, blocked the deal, saying it lacked a Northern California surface-water storage component.
They also said the plan fell short on the "design-build" approach to streamline contracting, failed to sufficiently streamline the state's environmental review process and contained too many items that had nothing to do with infrastructure.
Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge, said the plan Núñez hoped to submit to his house on Monday night would not have attracted a single Republican vote.
That was also the case in the Senate, when the Democratic package died without any GOP support for a proposal that needed two-thirds approval to pass.
"There was just no support in our caucus for what was felt to be a fiscally irresponsible bond package," Richman said of the Assembly Republicans, adding that "the prospects are dim for anything happening right now on a bond measure."
At least a few Democrats in the Assembly appeared ready to back away from the party's bond plan after Núñez massaged it with amendments from the version that was shot down on the Senate floor Saturday.
The Núñez version included a $500 million water storage plan favored by Schwarzenegger.
It would have allowed the Legislature at a later date to allocate the money to any or all of three locations on a two-thirds vote, with the cash rolling back to a groundwater program if lawmakers couldn't pull the trigger on a dam site by 2018.
Núñez's plan also took back some of the money the Senate had earmarked for urban parks, exempted 211 bridge reconstruction plans from California Environmental Quality Act provisions and put $250 million more than the Senate did into Highway 99 improvements - threatening other Northern California road projects.
Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, issued a memo to his own caucus - which he also made available to the media - at the outset of Monday's Assembly session, pointing out the several areas of disagreement between the measure he put up and the amended version offered by Núñez.
The speaker, in his radio interview Monday, dismissed the notion that he and Perata were at each other's throats. He said the two infrastructure versions were "pretty similar," but with "a few exceptions, which we thought were going to help deliver Republican votes, and they didn't."
With no agreement in hand, Núñez said, "We're going to be working day and night to make sure we put something on the ballot by November of this year."
State Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, said the way things played out in the Assembly this week, "It appears there isn't a consensus among Democrats" in the Legislature's lower house.
"Otherwise, they would have taken up the measure," Ortiz said.
Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, said the disagreements were to be expected.
"Is there ever a consensus anywhere among Democrats?" he said.
"There are always going to be different viewpoints. But on something as large and as important as this, there are going to have to be a variety of compromises made."
By midafternoon Tuesday, Assembly members had pretty much given up on the chance of any bond action on their part.
"I'm going home," said Republican Tim Leslie of Tahoe City.
"I would be surprised if there weren't a group of people sitting around a table somewhere talking, but I don't know who, where, or if at all."
About the writer:
The Bee's Andy Furillo can be reached at (916) 321-1141 or afurillo@sacbee.com.
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