SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's 120 lawmakers have set a record -- but none of them is proud. It's never taken this long to pass a state budget. Ever.Yet even as the impasse stretches into a third month, there will be few, if any, political consequences for the 38 Democrats and 22 Republicans seeking re-election in November, experts say. "Not one single legislator is in any danger of losing," said Tony Quinn, an editor of the California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races. "The gerrymandered districts have made them all safe."Left up to the state Legislature, the political boundaries in California are drawn to protect incumbents. The upshot is that in most districts one party dominates. In the past two elections, only one congressional seat -- and no state legislative seats -- has changed party hands.As an institution, the Legislature is highly unpopular. Lawmakers have a 20 percent approval rating and 84 percent of likely voters call the budget impasse a "big problem," according to an August poll by the Public Policy Institute of California. But at the district level, challengers still face steep odds as they try to persuade voters to switch parties and throw out the incumbent.Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines of Clovis, Calif., a fiscal conservative, has drawn a line in the sand against new taxes to solve the budget crisis. He has taken on Democrats and Republican Gov. Schwarzenegger, who has called for a temporary sales tax increase to help close the state's $15.2 billion budget gap.Villines said he hears from voters on both sides of the tax debate. But "we have a lot of people saying keep digging in, keep digging in. Don't raise taxes."The Public Policy Institute poll found that 59 percent of Republicans statewide preferred spending cuts to close the budget gap, while just 29 percent favored a mix of cuts and tax increases.The reverse is true in Democratic-dominated districts. The poll showed 21 percent of Democrats favoring cuts, with 51 percent supporting taxes and cuts."The legislators are very divided and unable to reach a consensus -- but so are the voters," said Mark Baldassare, the Public Policy Institute's president and chief executive. One way to bridge the divide is to change the way districts are drawn, say some good-government advocates. The current method, in which lawmakers redraw lines every 10 years, is "purely a re-election exercise and an incumbent-protection program," said Fred Keeley, who is on the leadership council of California Forward, a bipartisan organization that pushes for improvements in state government.California Forward supports Proposition 11, the Nov. 4 ballot measure that would strip lawmakers of redistricting power and give it to an independent commission. Other redistricting reform plans have been criticized and rejected through the years -- including a 2006 proposal that voters sent down to defeat. Voters also rejected a 2004 effort to change the law that requires approval of two-thirds of the Legislature to pass a budget or raise taxes. The supermajority rule -- which typically means votes from both parties are needed in the Democratic-controlled Legislature -- has been cited as one cause of the budget delays that have plagued the state.Under Prop. 11, most districts would probably still lean to one party. But boundaries would be drawn to more accurately reflect the changing political makeup of neighborhoods -- and some districts would likely become more moderate, said Keeley, a former Democratic lawmaker from Santa Cruz.However, a study released this week by the Public Policy Institute suggests redistricting reform is not the answer. The report looked at lawmaker voting patterns before and after the 2001 redistricting, which is widely blamed for creating safe seats. Not much changed, according to the report."There was just as much partisanship in the late 1990s as there was in the mid-2000s," said author Eric McGhee. Political partisanship plays a role even when redistricting is not a factor, such as in the U.S. Senate, where members serve states, not districts, according to the report.McGhee blames the "demise of bipartisanship and compromise" on other factors, such as the increased role of single-issue interest groups. Also, residents who pursue political office these days are more likely to be partisan, the report states. E-mail E.J. Schultz at eschultz(at)fresnobee.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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