SACRAMENTO — A plan to keep dozens of domestic-violence shelters from closing sailed out of the state Assembly late Friday night with nary a no vote. Yet hours later, the bill lay in the legislative trash heap, one of many lost to politics as lawmakers reached the deadline for completing their work this year.
Republicans in the Senate blocked more than 20 bills -- all needing GOP votes to pass, many approved by the lower house with bipartisan or near-unanimous support -- to leverage a trio of unrelated demands. Chief among those was the elimination of a program that allowed mostly low-income Californians to have the state do their tax returns free, something the maker of TurboTax has been trying to achieve for years.
The other demands, which Democrats say they were willing to meet, were putting a Republican name on a popular bill and tweaking corporate tax breaks passed months ago.
"This is what they hold out for?" exasperated Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said shortly after 3 a.m. Saturday.
One by one, bills to keep the shelters open, help counties prepare for the next swine flu outbreak and blunt the effect of the state's raid on local funds, among others, fell as GOP senators refused to vote.
There's no policy dispute, most involved agreed, though Republicans said the blockade wasn't so much about the demands as the principle of trust. Democrats, they said, broke promises that had sealed the summer's budget pact.
"The point here is not one, two or three issues," said Senate GOP leader Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta). "The point is one issue: We have to be able to abide by agreements."
Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) accused Republicans of "extortion" as important legislation failed. Though Democrats hold the majority in each house, the disputed bills all required a two-thirds majority for various reasons. Some Republican votes are needed to reach that mark, which gave the GOP a veto power.
Steinberg did not dispute that he promised Republicans that the Senate would consider scrapping ReadyReturn, the state tax program, which in the end the upper house refused to do. But Steinberg still bristled at the GOP obstruction.
"The inside political game here does not matter to the people," he said.
It matters a great deal to interest groups. Intuit, which makes TurboTax, has spent $618,000 on lobbying in Sacramento since 2007 and donated to the campaigns of 29 of the 40 state senators since 2005.
