Dangerous game

California’s legislators are up to their usual end-of-summer high-jinks by playing games with the state’s annual budget, which they should have passed by July 1.

Today, 58 days past their deadline, everyone continues to point fingers at each other in a dangerous game of “Not it!”

As of Sunday, Aug. 24, state Republicans and Democrats appeared to be $6 billion away from reaching a compromise on how to fix a $15.2 billion budget deficit, with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushing hard for a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax for three years before rolling the tax rate back.

The Governor has also vowed, since Aug. 6, to refuse to sign any new bills until the Legislature can get its act together on the state budget. He also signed an executive order July 31 temporarily cutting the pay of 176,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour and ordered nearly 10,000 part-time state workers to be laid off.

That resulted in another war of words with State Controller John Chiang, a Democrat, who refused to abide by the pay-cut order. Chiang, whose office issues the paychecks to those workers, appears to have stymied the Governor, who filed a potentially expensive lawsuit against Chiang.

Meanwhile, summer school teachers and some special education program aides are going without paychecks for two months while highly-paid legislators continue to draw full salaries.

California is far from being the only state in the nation with serious budget troubles. In June, as most states ended their fiscal years, 20 states reported budget gaps, reported the National Conference of State Legislatures. But California has only been able to produce an on-time budget in four of the last 20 years, and has several times extended the process into September, which is where we might be headed this year.

The state Assembly, which was to meet Monday, is taking the remainder of this week off for the Democratic convention.