California Legislature

State lawmakers tiptoed Tuesday into the roiling debate over how to overhaul California government. With less than a month left in the legislative session, proponents of change urged a state Senate panel to quickly adopt ideas that have bipartisan support while continuing to push for solutions to tougher problems -- or risk having voters do it for them. "It really comes down to a question of political will -- as opposed to political won't," said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a business-backed group that is pressing for a constitutional convention to let citizens draft a new blueprint for the way state government operates.

A substantial number of the budget revisions that will go before the Legislature today promise no real savings or revenue and would ensure that California's fiscal woes stretch beyond the current crisis into coming years. The Democrat-driven plan, which on paper reduces the state deficit by $23.2 billion, contains $7.2 billion in bookkeeping maneuvers, an analysis of the proposal shows.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is exploring a settlement of two lawsuits that would require California to dramatically reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded prisons -- and limit the Legislature's influence on the issue, according to participants in the discussions. The settlement discussions in the federal court cases, which have been consolidated, are in an early stage, and the framework of a deal has not been ironed out.

There'll soon be a new face of the Legislature: a nice-guy face, the look of a wholesome policy wonk, the image of anything but a backroom boss. This couldn't come at a more opportune time for the disrespected institution -- its stature scraping the bottom of polls, voters having just rejected its desired term limits change in a slap at legislative leadership. Sen.

A Republican state senator proposed political reform legislation Wednesday that hasn't got a snowball's chance in a Sacramento summer. And that's too bad, because it could cure some serious ills. The proposed state constitutional amendment would, in one package: * Repeal legislative term limits, but not until 2016. Any benefit to current legislators would be diluted and delayed far into the future. * Strip the Legislature of its power to draw district maps, a flagrant conflict of interest.

The California Senate offers special interests that give money to its charity the opportunity to travel with state lawmakers to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Tokyo and other foreign locales. The Senate uses its staff -- paid by taxpayers -- to help make travel plans for the contributors, some donors said. The donors are mostly corporate interests with business before the Legislature who get federal tax deductions for their contributions.

Michael Blumenfield thinks his son Bob would do a fine job representing the San Fernando Valley in the state Legislature. So he poured $120,000 into campaign advertising and, he said, never discussed it with his son, who lives in the same Woodland Hills neighborhood. By law, such "independent expenditures" cannot be coordinated with candidates. They are most often used by business and union interests to mail brochures and air TV ads for or against candidates in the weeks before an election.

It's not all about budget brawling. Beneath the haze of haggling over taxes and spending, several hundred bills are lined up awaiting their fates as legislators rush to leave town. The two-year regular session of the Legislature ends Aug. 31. More important, the secretary of state's deadline for placing any measure on the November ballot -- budget reform, water bond, revised high-speed rail proposal -- is this weekend. That deadline presumably could slip.

The Legislature voted Friday to send Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger the final measures needed to resolve the budget deadlock that had dragged on a record 81 days past the start of the fiscal year. The spending plan, with $104.3 billion in the general fund, allots more to education and social services than last year, but not enough to avoid cutbacks in schools, healthcare facilities and payments to the disabled, elderly and blind.

The way legislators tell it, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the villain in the saga that has played out in the Capitol in recent months. First he took hostage a year's worth of their work -- about 1,000 pieces of legislation -- threatening to veto the bills until lawmakers sent him a budget. Then, with a spending plan finally in place, he rejected their proposals at a record high rate, 35%, and called it collateral damage.