Time running out for deals on health, water

SACRAMENTO — If this were football, it would be fourth down and long yardage with time running out, the fans pretty much resigned to losing, but the key players still not giving up.

Same thing with the current Capitol games.

The year's legislative session, already in overtime, seems to be fizzling out in depressing disappointment. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders still haven't achieved their top priorities: expanding healthcare and updating the state's waterworks.

But these key playmakers haven't packed it in. Although the odds are poor, based on recent performance, they're still trying to fashion compromises by Thanksgiving. That's apparently the deadline to qualify a water bond for the Feb. 5 presidential primary ballot.

It's also when a healthcare financing plan must be agreed on between the governor and Democrats in order to assure that there'll be ample time to prepare a ballot initiative for next November's election. The longer negotiations drag on, the less time there'll be for gathering voter signatures, and that would run up the cost by millions.

There's no hope that the Legislature will place a healthcare financing plan on a ballot -- thus avoiding the laborious, expensive initiative process -- because any proposal would require some form of tax increase. That leaves out Republican lawmakers. Some of their votes would be needed to reach the necessary two-thirds majority for legislative passage.

So the Schwarzenegger-Democratic plot is to pass a bill on a simple majority vote spelling out the details of healthcare expansion, then bypass Republican lawmakers and ask voters to approve a financing plan for the expansion.

That's not only convoluted, it's unprecedented in the history of Capitol games. And it's symptomatic of California's polarized Legislature, with Democrats and Republicans far apart ideologically. The only Capitol centrist with power is the governor.

What really clogs up the place, of course, is the two-thirds vote requirement for virtually any money bill. Add in inexperience caused by legislative term limits, and a governor who never before held an elective job, and you've got a blueprint for paralysis.

It was fitting that the Capitol was shrouded in a dense fog Wednesday as an Assembly committee heard testimony on the governor's $14-billion healthcare plan.