ShareThisCalifornia is one of just three states that require supermajority votes to enact state budgets, and while that constitutional provision has been in effect for nearly eight decades, only in the past quarter-century has it become a major political impediment.
The state's socioeconomic evolution, term limits, gerrymandered legislative districts, volatility in the state's revenue and the concentration of fiscal power in Sacramento have made the budget process infinitely more complex and, in turn, turned the two-thirds budget vote, once a formality, into a major factor.
Much of last month's machinations over overhauling the deficit-ridden budget stemmed from the legal requirement that at least a few Republicans join majority Democrats in voting for the bills requiring the supermajority margin. And in its wake, Democratic leaders and liberal groups renewed their chant for change.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, for instance, called for "changing the two-thirds requirement (that) obviously isn't working."
When Steinberg and others call for changing the two-thirds requirement, however, it's a little unclear just what they want. While they would like to lower the voting requirement for budgets, they really want to lower or eliminate the two-thirds vote requirement for raising taxes, which was imposed by voters in Proposition 13 in 1978.
Although often paired rhetorically, they are really two distinct matters, both constitutionally and politically.
Eliminating the two-thirds vote for budgets would have relatively little impact on the contents of state spending plans, and it could be mostly positive in terms of producing more timely budgets and avoiding some of the distortions that placating Republican demands create.
Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican icon in the Legislature (he's now a congressman), endorsed lowering the budget vote threshold several years ago. Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, this year introduced a constitutional amendment that would allow simple majority votes for any budget that does not increase spending by more than 5 percent.
Republicans who support the notion contend that retaining the two-thirds vote for budgets doesn't produce better spending plans and forces GOP lawmakers to be complicit in budgets that are largely written by Democrats. Better they have the onus for the budgets, so goes this theory.
Taxes are another matter entirely. No Republican politician would endorse removing the two-thirds vote on taxes. There is a cogent argument for retaining it -- budgets are temporary but taxes are at least semi-permanent.
Tax policy is just too important to be subject to political whim by a gerrymandered, ideologically tilted Legislature. And voters, who overwhelmingly rejected changing the two-thirds vote on budgets and taxes just five years ago, are unlikely to have changed their minds, given the Legislature's record-low popularity in recent polling.
(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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