Dard divorce part 1 CAVANAUGH

Dard divorce part 1

CAVANAUGH: So is there any chance that a special election could happen later this summer, or is that basically out until November? MCELROY: Politically, its gone. Between the time frame that it takes to do it, you couldnt get it on at in June at that point, youd have to wait till July. CHECK AUDIO in terms of who the electors who are home for that election. People travel a lot during the summer. And so youre never sure whos going to be around. But you can bet that youre losing a chunk of the voting pool at any given time during the summer because people are off roving the world, trying to forget their troubles. And you dont know quite which segment has been traveling and whose votes youre losing, who you have to appeal to. And uncertainty makes politicians even more disagreeable than usual. CAVANAUGH: You know, Leo, you read the accounts of whats been going on during these budget negotiations, and its really hard to make sense out of them. From what I understand, governor brown already cut 11 billion, and therefore whittled down the budget deficit to 15 billion, and there seems, am I wrong in saying this, there seems to have been very little movement on the Republican side towards any kind of comp mice with the governor. MCELROY: Thats exactly the situation. Theres been virtually no movement. There have been some suggestions, some of which the governors shown some interest in. The governors unveiled his own pension reform plan, for example, and pension reform on public employees is one of the major Republican items. But this there are also Republican items that have nothing to do with balancing the budget, that have nothing to do with the states fiscal situation. For example, one of the Republican demands is to move the presidential primary to March. They want to be early in their presidential primary because there will be a Republican race to run in 20 A lot of candidates, and theyd like to be up there early. Well, are its a little tough to find a connection between that and the budget situation. But if youre Republicans, and you say, ah, ha, we have two votes to give you that could make the balance, what can we get for the two votes? At this point, their price tag is too high. CAVANAUGH: Im speaking with Leo McElroy, hes nonpartisan Sacramento political consultant, and of course a contributor to morning edition here on KPBS. Of and were talking about the fact that Governor Browns plan to have a special election in June to ask voters to extend some temporary taxes and fees seems to have fallen through. And just to be clear, Leo, did the governor need two thirds of the legislature in order to get that ballot measure on the ballot so to speak? MCELROY: Are well, there is a legal battle over this. Basically, yes, he needs two thirds to put that on because its a revenue measure. And the voters in their wisdom chose to say yes, you can pass a budget now with a majority, but you cant raise money without a super majority, without a two thirds majority. The Republicans did get a legal opinion that under certain, very limited, circumstances, a majority vote could put a revenue measure on the ballot. But and the legal technicalities are just numerous, but to try to sum up, essentially it can only be done if you are amending a revenue measure that was already passed by the initiative process. MCELROY: Its a little tough to fit into that framework. MCELROY: People are looking at us, scratching thirds requirement heads, saying is there a way to do this? And I tell you, there are people working on if right now. As we speak, there are people still had you had huddled over their desk trying to dard divorce part 1 some way to fit some revenue measures into previous initiatives as amendments to those so that they can pass them on a majority vote. Nobody I know believes that there is a way to make up 15 billion by doing that. CAVANAUGH: Right. And dard divorce part 1 reason that people are struggling so hard to try to figure out a way to do this, even if its impossible is because theres real fear that attends the idea of actually having to cut an additional 15 billion from this already pared down budget, and mostly that fear falls on Californias teachers.