SACRAMENTO -- — In a Capitol increasingly riven by partisan bickering and bitterness, one of the few steady hands lawmakers have counted on to rise above it all and bring clarity to policy issues is Elizabeth Hill.
But on Thursday, she announced that she is calling it quits.
The impending departure of Hill, the Legislature's chief budget analyst for more than two decades, comes as the state is in the midst of a budget crisis of historic proportions. She won't vacate the post until the scheduled end of the legislative session this summer, but already many in and around the statehouse are fretting about her decision to put down her calculator and pick up her golf clubs.
She said her decision was made with no ill will toward a Legislature that has increasingly ignored what most experts agree is her sound budget advice in favor of political expediency.
The 58-year-old who has been known for years in Sacramento as "the budget nun" said she will be leaving with one major regret: "The budget remains unbalanced."
Year after year, her staff in the Legislative Analyst's Office has shown lawmakers the least painful path to a balanced budget. Unlike the lawmakers she serves, Hill is not beholden to anti-tax pledges or ties to unions and other special interests and is thus free to call on legislators to rein in spending when it spirals or to raise taxes rather than borrow.
Lawmakers have listened only occasionally. The state's finances have been out of balance for nearly seven straight years, despite surges of revenue when the economy picked up dramatically after recovering from the dot-com bust.
"I am sorry to see her go," said former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican. "She has done a job that is not easy to do."
Most recently, Hill declared that the budget proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did such a poor job of setting policy priorities that it was incumbent on her office to present an alternative blueprint. Within weeks of its release, the anti-tax crusader Schwarzenegger was endorsing a key provision in it: the reduction or elimination of $2.7 billion in tax breaks available to California businesses and individuals.
The proposal remains in limbo in the Legislature.
