SACRAMENTO — With lawmakers still unable to deliver a budget after three days of intense negotiations, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger prepared to lay off 10,000 government workers and his administration said it would halt the last 275 state-funded public works projects still in operation.
The projects, which cost $3.8 billion and include upgrades to 18 bridges and roads in Los Angeles County to protect them from collapsing in earthquakes, had been allowed to continue as others were suspended because the state was running out of cash.
The projects to be suspended today had been exempted from a November stop order because of the significant financial cost of canceling contracts, the expense of resuming them or the public-health or public-safety ramifications. The list also includes work to eliminate arsenic in the Central Valley town of Live Oak and half-built highway construction projects.
Schwarzenegger had delayed sending out pink slips since Friday, hoping that lawmakers would soon approve a budget. But they failed Monday to find a third GOP vote in the state Senate to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to pass a budget -- a requirement that essentially gives the minority Republicans veto power. A spokesman for Schwarzenegger said layoff notices would go out today.
Late Monday evening, both houses of the Legislature adjourned and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) ordered senators back to the chamber at 10 a.m. today, saying they would stay until a budget passed.
"Bring a toothbrush," he said. "I will not allow anyone to go home to resume their lives or any kind of normal business."
State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) was viewed as the most likely candidate to provide the final vote, but by Monday evening legislative leaders had not agreed to his demands. The dominant Democrats need three Republican votes in each house to pass the budget; leaders in the Assembly said the votes were available in the lower house.
Assemblyman Mike Villines of Clovis and Sen. Dave Cogdill of Modesto, the two GOP leaders in the Legislature, told their members last week that the deal they helped forge was the strongest Republicans could get. But most GOP lawmakers have taken an antitax pledge, and the package relies on $14.4 billion in tax hikes to plug a nearly $42-billion budget hole.
The challenge of rounding up the handful of Republican votes has shown how strong the resistance to taxes remains in California politics.
