SACRAMENTO — A court- appointed receiver vowed Thursday to raid California's depleted state treasury for billions of dollars as the state Senate's minority Republicans blocked -- for the second time in three days -- his plan to build prison medical beds.
The developments threatened to severely worsen the state's fiscal crisis while setting up a showdown with federal judges who have declared the standard of healthcare in state prisons to be unconstitutional.
The receiver, J. Clark Kelso, a normally sedate law professor, sent a harshly worded letter to Michael Genest, director of the state Department of Finance, in which he announced that he would demand $7 billion over three years and branded state officials as liars.
"I can no longer stand idly by while the state continues its pattern of prevarication," he wrote.
Kelso, who declined to comment Thursday, said in an interview early in the week that he had been given reason to believe that the Senate would authorize his plan, although he declined to reveal who had assured him. Lawmakers first rebuffed his proposal Tuesday.
Republican legislators said they also intend today to reject the proposed settlement of a federal court case related to prison healthcare and overcrowding that would have diverted tens of thousands of convicted criminals and parole violators into local treatment programs and jails rather than state lockups.
That deal, the subject of months of negotiations, would have averted a trial before a three-judge panel that could result in a mass release of inmates.
The Republicans said they would not settle the court case or vote for the receiver's plan, which they criticized as too expensive, in isolation.
They are calling for a comprehensive package on prisons to be negotiated with Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration that also would require changes to a prison construction plan approved last year.
That way, they say, state officials can resolve the prison crisis and the court case on their own terms.
"We can remove the oversight and the threats of the federal courts," state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster) told colleagues. "We can control our prisons, rather than a liberal federal court."
Democrats warned that it would be foolish to think that the state could forestall the receiver and federal judges in multiple pending lawsuits on medical care, mental health, dental care and disability access.
