With cries from Steinberg and Bass that they had saved HHS, the signing of the budget today was a massive blow to the rather weak, and short lived spin. The cries were silenced when Health & Human Services was wiped out with the stroke of a blue pencil leaving an unbearable silence throughout legislative offices. The cries slowly turned to claims of "illegal" and that the Governor's pencil had over stepped it's boundaries...
We've added some analysis from Dave Dayen at D-Day:
There's been quite a bit of confusion about whether or not the Governor was able to make line-item cuts in this budget. After all, it was a revision, not a budget agreement where spending appropriations are made. In those cases the Governor can make cuts, but this was a revision consisting of a series of cuts and fund shifts, and it's unclear whether the Governor can make additional cuts on top of cuts in a budget revision.
Craig Cornett, the Budget Director in the office of Darrell Steinberg, has sent out a letter to interested parties, which I've reproduced below. Cornett reiterates the argument that the revisions do not constitute appropriations, and should not be subject to the line-item veto. This is particularly true with any appropriation reductions that passed with a simply majority vote, since a budget vote must have a 2/3 majority. Cornett offers the remedy here, but he confines it to the courts.
Should the Controller implement these vetoes, we suspect that some party that will be injured by the vetoes will file a lawsuit. Given the sweep of the reductions, this could come from any of a number of potential plaintiffs, such as children who will no longer have health insurance because of the reductions to Healthy Families Programs, battered women’s shelters that will be threatened with closure because of elimination of funding for the Domestic Violence Program, AIDS prevention and treatment programs that will no longer receive state support because of the elimination of Office of AIDS funding, or counties that will see cuts to their Child Welfare Services or Medi-Cal administration funding.
What Cornett leaves out of this analysis is the ability for the Legislature to override the Governor's blue pencil edits. Obviously that is off the menu, as far as we know.
I don't think it would surprise anyone to see Schwarzenegger break the law to balance the budget - so many provisions in this budget violate the law that it can be seen as a stimulus package for the legal system.
When the Governor signed ABx4 1—the bill that revised the 2009-10 Budget Act—and accompanying trailer bills this morning, he line-item vetoed about $500 million in General Fund expenditures in order to ensure that the state has a reserve for 2009-10.
Budget staff from both the Senate and Assembly worked closely with Legislative Counsel in construction of ABx4 1 and, based on that work, and follow-up conversations, we think that these vetoes—especially those of health and human services programs—are outside the Governor's Constitutional authority, for a couple of reasons.
First, reductions to amounts in the various budget schedules do not actually constitute appropriations and, thus, are not subject to line item veto. This argument is bolstered by Counsel’s long-held view that, unlike new or increased items of appropriation, the Legislature may reduce General Fund items of appropriation with a simple majority vote, and any General Fund action that takes place with a simple majority vote is not, by definition, an appropriation, and therefore not subject to line-item veto.
Second, most of the budget revisions for the health and human services departments were not even included in the scheduled items, but instead were placed in Sections of 568 to 575 of ABx4 1.
These sections of the bill added new Control Sections 17.50 to 18.50 to the 2009-10 Budget Act that reduced the various appropriations for HHS departments in a descriptive manner, thus making it even clearer that they do not constitute appropriations. These control sections include departments that were specifically included in the Governor’s line-item vetoes—Aging, Health Care Services, Public Health, MRMIB, Mental Health, Developmental Services, and Social Services.
Thanks Dave!
Really? Those folks are going to file lawsuits??? Are they kidding?
Bass and Steinberg need to lead the charge on any suits that would be filed. Since the furlough days created in the already back logged court system will pretty much guarentee that no case would be heard for a very long time...