Fraying At The Edges

I was on a conference call earlier with State Controller John Chiang and Rep. Hilda Solis about the Governor's callous executive order, and both delivered predictably strong comments. Chiang, who has told the governor he will refuse to comply with the order, blasted Schwarzenegger, saying "state workers shouldn't be put in the middle of a political battle," and that this was a nakedly punitive attempt against California's state employee unions, which the whom the Governor has always held a grudge (they helped deep-six his "reform" agenda in 2005). Rep. Solis was even more outraged, saying "let's put him on the federal minimum wage, and get rid of the special interests paying for his hotel room across the street from the Capitol, and see how he likes it." She rocks.

Chiang has made his decision, and now only litigation can force him to carry out the Governor's order (and Chiang discouraged litigation as a "waste of time.") But we expect these kind of statements from Democrats. Take a look at this one from Republican Greg Aghazarian:

"While I appreciate the Governor's leadership on this budget crisis, I cannot support reducing the salaries of our state employees to minimum wage.

If our state workers had the power to pass a budget, then it might be appropriate to hold them accountable, but that's not where the responsibility lies according to our State Constitution. I cannot predict when a budget will be passed, but I do know this, when it does happen it will be because we worked to achieve bipartisan solutions.

I understand what the Governor is trying to accomplish with this action, but I must respectfully disagree and urge the Governor to reconsider his executive order."

Now, Aghazarian is talking out of both sides of his mouth. He's trying to win a Senate election against Lois Wolk in SD-05, and he wants to be seen as some kind of moderate when his record suggests the opposite. But the fact that he's gone off the reservation means that there's a lot of pressure to come out against the Governor on this one, putting him alone on an island of his own making. It's important to keep pounding away and make him completely unpopular and unable to help his party in the fall as a result of this stupid, heartless action.

The Governor has set up a Web site to answer employee questions about the wage cut. Predictably, it has no interactive function. If he allowed comments on it the server would be down.