Opinion: Let’s get this budget party started

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Sacramento sees budget deadlines pretty much the same way the ultra-hip see birthday party invitations. If the bash is supposed to begin at 7 p.m., that’s about when the fabulous people start arriving home from their previous engagement and start thinking about jumping in the shower. So that’s kind of the partier’s equivalent of June 15, the Legislature’s drop-dead legal deadline for adopting a budget. Only the socially awkward or very polite show up (or adopt a budget) on time.

Dinner at 8? Sacramento’s equivalent is July 1, the deadline for the governor to sign the budget. The super-cool partier is still picking out an outfit. The super-cool lawmakers are still, well, maybe picking out their outfits. Cake at 9? Kind of like the rest of July for the Legislature. Make some calls, find out who else is going, talk about who might be arriving together and who broke up and is no longer speaking to each other. Make fun of the people (the losers!) who showed up on time. August? OK, now it’s time to get in the car.

But really -- what time is the party over? How late is too late? What time are the cops coming to break things up?

This year, the annual angry, dismal, backbiting Sacramento budget party may have to wrap up by the night of Saturday, Aug. 16 at the stroke of midnight. That’s the last chance -- no, really, the very last chance -- to get something on the November 4 ballot. Many of the budget options that have been discussed include some kind of measure that would have to be approved by voters: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed securitization of the lottery and reformulation of the proceeds, for example, or some kind of bail-out refinancing bond.

That’s also the deadline for other ballot measures that various state honchos claim they want or need, like a water bond or prison reform. But Democrats, Republicans and the governor are treating one another’s proposals as if they were pinatas. Just to stick with the party imagery.

Even at that, it’s too late for the regular ballot; the Legislature and the governor would have to rely on an expensive supplemental ballot, with a special abbreviated process for review of ballot titles and summaries. So they’re really pushing it.

If nothing happens next week, all bets are off. Too late to come to the party. The cops are there, the partiers who did show up are passed out on the lawn, leaning over a bucket or in some drunken fistfight. And Mom and Dad are coming home, and they are not going to be happy. But it’s their own fault. They should never have left the house unattended.