ShareThisA recent statewide poll found that just one-sixth of Californians like how the Legislature is doing its job.
The state Assembly's Democratic so-called leadership proved Thursday that even that record-low approval rating is probably much too high by wimping out on reforming an overcrowded overly expensive and unmanageable prison system.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass unveiled a much revised -- perhaps "gutted" would be a better description -- version of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's prison reform plan, eliminating almost all of its salient aspects, including a commission to overhaul sentencing laws.
Democratic senators showed backbone by ignoring Republican taunts and law enforcement criticism to pass the plan. Bass -- who had agreed to it during budget negotiations -- stalled as her Democrats, many of whom are running for new offices next year, balked, apparently fearing being branded as soft on crime.
No one likes turning some felons loose before their terms are served, or diverting offenders into lower-level custody. But the reality is that we have packed prisons with nearly twice as many felons as they were designed to handle and have been unwilling to spend the billions of dollars it would take to relieve overcrowding, while operating expenses have soared.
California is spending $10 billion a year on prisons, twice as much as a decade ago and a far greater portion of its budget than any other state. It would be about $6 billion were we spending even the average of other states.
A panel of federal judges decreed that unless the state quickly produces a credible plan to reduce inmates by one-fourth, it would be held in contempt, with a seizure, just as judges have already done on prison health care, possible. While some politicians may like a takeover to shift the onus off themselves, judges could then order wholesale releases without any plans for alternative custody or parole and/or, as they have done with health care, order the state to spend billions of dollars it doesn't have.
The Democrats who refuse to accept Schwarzenegger's plan voted just a month ago for a budget that assumes prison costs will be trimmed by $1.2 billion a year, and most of them voted two years ago for a sentencing commission they now shun.
"They don't have the guts to go out there and create the prison reform that they have been talking about now for two decades," Schwarzenegger said -- accurately. "They don't have the guts now to make those decisions because they are now more worried about safe seats than safe streets."
Republicans shouldn't skate either. They repeatedly decry bloated spending and posture as fiscal conservatives, but they have never met a lock-'em-up crime bill they didn't like and didn't provide even one vote for the plan to reduce prison populations and expenses.
Once again, the Legislature demonstrates why it's held in contempt and why California desperately needs a civic overhaul.
(E-mail Dan Walters at dwalters(at)sacbee.com. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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