Opinion: One last stab to the budget from Gov. Schwarzenegger’s veto pen

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My oh my. This is about as transparent as Saran Wrap in sunlight.

After spending weeks calling on the Legislature to stop playing politics and pass a budget, what does Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger do?

He signs the budget, all right. But not before he uses his veto pen to whack 10% out of the budgets of four other state constitutional officers -- attorney general, controller, treasurer and secretary of state (all Democrats) -- along with the Board of Equalization (mostly Democrats). This smacks not just of penny-pinching but of pique. A judge ruled that Schwarzenegger did not have the authority to order furloughs for these elected officials’ employees as he did for other state workers, so evidently he’s doing with his line-item veto what the court told him he didn’t have the authority to do by executive order.

On top of that, he whacked nearly two-thirds out of the budget for the lieutenant governor, John Garamendi -- a Democrat who’s running to succeed Schwarzenegger -- but he didn’t snip a penny from the budget of the insurance commissioner, Steve Poizner -- a Republican who’s running to succeed Schwarzenegger as governor.