Creating the Story - A Continuing Saga

California is one of three states that requires a 2/3 vote to pass a budget. When the provision was originally adopted, during the depression, that may have been the norm. It was reinforced as a constitutional standard as a part of a voter approved measure in 1962. But the Sacramento Bee does not like that requirement. They editorialize against the standard at almost every opportunity, sometimes it is not on the editorial page. For example, in today's front section the Bee has the following headline "Budget Brawl boosts the lure of majority vote"

One would expect that the story would present some new information about a change in voter attitudes or some other evidence that would reinforce what the headline argued. Indeed, California was 52 days late in adopting a budget. But it was not the last to complete its budget process. The story quotes a suggestion by the Pro Tem of the Senate to convene a working group to think about ways to improve the budget process, that might include changing the voting requirement. It also cites the Speaker of the Assembly who asked for a voter initiative on the budget. It rehashed the effort by Senator Tom McClintock to eliminate the 2/3 requirement last year. Although McClintock is a conservative he thinks the 2/3 requirement allows some members in the minority to deal - thus raising expenditures. All of those are old news.

The real grist of this story is a set of comments from one Arturo Pérez, who is with the Conference of State Legislatures, one of two major groups that brings together state legislators to talk about common problems. NCSL is often seen as a bit more left of center than its counterpart. But Pérez "cautioned that a simple majority will not ensure an on time budget."

The Bee then binds together some statements from the Speaker, who has always supported eliminating the requirement and a quote from the Governor who stated in the middle of August that he might be open to a change. But as Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) commented the special requirement for adopting the budget is "consistent with the philosophy of our nation's Founding Fathers, who wanted to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority."

From my perspective, the real story here is that a representative from the NCSL suggests that eliminating the 2/3 requirement is probably not going to fix the non-functional parts of the current budget process. But that story would not fit in with the Bee's campaign to eliminate the protection for the minority party. Were the Bee doing its job it might convene a debate on its editorial pages about the 2/3 requirement. It has become a shibboleth that the 2/3 requirement is somehow "anti-democratic" (although last time we checked we live in a republic not a democracy). But the wisdom of the Founders was to recognize that some parts of the process should meet a higher standard of performance - in order to assure some ability of the minority to participate in a meaningful way. That is a benefit that even the Bee should not lose sight of.