Tostitos State Park

This is the legacy of historically unpopular Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his friends in the Yacht Party - corporate sponsorships for state parks.

State parks officials and nonprofit organizations scrambled Wednesday to find funding and possibly new corporate sponsors to keep as many as 100 parks and beaches open after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger slashed an additional $6.2 million out of the state parks system [...]

State officials won't finalize a list of park closures until Labor Day and said they hope to see the parks reopened in one to two years.

"We are actively seeking anyone who can help us with these places, all of them jewels, at a time when people need them most," said state parks Director Ruth Coleman.

"There are many groups and corporations that will step up to the plate and try to help," said Elizabeth Goldstein, executive director of the California State Parks Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting state parks. "But it would be a mistake to think that these efforts will be sufficient to replace the public funds being extracted." [...]

The crisis also triggered debate over the kinds of recognition corporate sponsors could expect in return for helping to subsidize a state park.

"We're reaching out to all possible partners -- cities, counties, nonprofits, banks, corporations, newspapers, individuals -- who would be interested in helping us," said Roy Stearns, spokesman for the state parks department. "Maybe we can find agreements that don't alter, commercialize or degrade our state park system.

"For example, if Budweiser came forward with money for Malibu Beach State Park, we wouldn't change the name to Budweiser Beach," he said. "But why not put up a banner saying, 'This park is kept open by Budweiser' for as long as they continue helping us?

If this isn't a hop, skip and a jump to unique licensing agreements to sell products on site, I don't know what is.

The article makes pretty clear that, while state parks and beaches may not be financially self-sustaining, they generate major amounts of economic activity. In fact, over the past year, the system "is currently packed with the highest visitation rates ever recorded," according to the parks director. This leads to residual spending in the areas around parks and beaches, increased tourism, etc. The natural beauty of California is a major attraction throughout the world.

Thanks to Governor Hoover we must lock them up or turn to the private sector to sustain them.

All part of his plan.

...I want to also address George Skelton's complaint that progressives somehow made their bed by voting down the May 19 ballot measures and now they must lie in it. I'll ignore for the moment this major error in the piece, the assertion that "state revenue has been plummeting, down 13% in the last two years even with February's tax increases." (um, they didn't take effect until April, not over the "last two years") And I won't comment on his barely suppressed glee over eliminating cost-of-living adjustments for poor people on welfare.

Schwarzenegger and the Legislature were widely accused of scare tactics -- crying wolf -- when they warned about the consequences of voters rejecting the May ballot measures. The wolf just broke down the door.

So let's do Skelton's counterfactual. Let's envision a world where the ballot measures that impacted the bottom line passed.

Those were worth a little less than $6 billion.

The deficit was $26 billion.

$1 billion of those $6 billion were cuts to different programs. If a world where cuts to certain programs means we wouldn't feel cuts to other programs is a world you populate and exalt, I think you're alone.

The other $5 billion was dubious borrowing. The most contentious item in the budget, and the most likely to have been dropped in your counterfactual... was $5 billion in dubious borrowing, only to local governments.

So the consequences of voting down very unwise ballot measures was... what, exactly? Different cuts to vital services and different dubious borrowing?

(And of course, we'd have a permanent spending cap, rather than the political spending cap we have now thanks to the conservative veto.)

Play Destroy California, The Home Game

You can actually see the full list of proposed cuts by the Governor here. He has engaged in several tricks to actually slow down the dispersal of the cuts, priming himself for the moment when the Legislature must hurry up and approve everything he proposes immediately. It's a neat trick. He released the cuts in stages, with multiple changes, so the relevant committees could not get a full picture. Finally, the full release comes with a little more than a week to go. Noreen Evans, for one, is pissed, and Aaron McLear responds with a healthy dose of sexism.

At the budget conference committee Monday, Assembly Budget Committeee Chairwoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, vented some of her frustrations at chief deputy finance director Ana Matosantos.

Noting that the governor had made three separate revisions to his May budget, Evans curtly asked Matosantos "Are we done now?"

Evans’ cross-examination of Matosantos garnered an angry reply from the administration. “We will continue to revise our budget numbers as the situation deteriorates,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said. “It is our sincere hope that Assemblywoman Evans will be able to keep up.”

McLear is an ass, and his point is ridiculous - nothing's changed in the three days between new documents of cuts. This is a deliberate attempt to keep everything fuzzy and not permanent right up until the moment when it all must pass. It's a typical shell game.

As to the document, among some of the goodies not already announced:

• The state will increase withholding by 10%, essentially getting an interest-free loan from the citizens. Employees can opt out, and I'm sure everyone will know to do that.
• The proposal to borrow $2 billion from local governments remains. This at the same time when Arnold proposes budget "solutions" like moving inmates to county jails, INCREASING their budget burden.
• Eliminating general fund money to stop domestic violence.
• Like everything else, the savings in corrections are vague and potentially unworkable, and almost all the savings in the corrections budget are in precisely the kind of programs we need to expand, like rehabilitation, vocational training, and substance abuse programs.
• I've also heard about eliminating the state's funding of vote by mail ballots, but that's not in this document (and sounds patently illegal, if the ballots couldn't go out).

It's all good, though, because we can just get volunteers to monitor all the state parks. Sounds like a perfect plan.

The sneakiest part of this whole budget deal, the capper, is that Arnold is proposing a LARGER budget reserve than in previous years, essentially mandating Prop. 1A despite its loss. He's actually capping spending.

In recent days, the governor has introduced new budget cuts, including plans to eliminate popular state programs like CalWORKS and Healthy Families, eliminate millions in funding for state parks, and to lay off up to 5,000 state employees.

But in Monday’s conference committee hearing, Evans pointed out that the governor’s latest proposal had a budget reserve of more than $4 billion, even while proposing cuts to popular programs that would not have to be eliminated if the reserve were smaller.

McLear defended the governor’s numbers. “There’s a need to have a reserve,” he said. “The swings in revenue are so dramatic, and we have to make sure we’re able to pay the bills.”

Times like these are what the budget reserve was invented for.

What will happen over the next two weeks is that the Governor will keep tweaking and tweaking, right up until the day where he says "Pass this now or else." And given the state of the Democrats in the legislature, I'm not sanguine about the reaction.

Schwarzenegger - The Ultimate Girly-Man

(This is a little technique called "using your opponent's words against them," not an signal that I think "girly-man" is some kind of devastating or even viable slur, for the record)

Key stakeholders are weighing in on the Governor's revised budget. The Education Coalition notes that public education is still shortchanged, primarily through suspending COLA adjustments. Health Access California sees major cuts to health care, through denying certain Medi-Cal benefits to adults, eliminating coverage for some low-income working parents, and forcing others through loads of paperwork in the hopes that they'll trip up and forget to check a box so they can be purged from the rolls. Shane Goldmacher has a pretty comprehensive list of several other reactions.

But my favorite take - probably because it most mirrors my own - is from Dan Weintraub, whose main point is basically what a coward this Governor is.

The governor's revised budget would give more to schools and less to health and welfare than he proposed in January, but the real story is his proposal to use lottery revenues to bridge the stubborn gap between spending and tax collections. Schwarzenegger's press staff is furiously trying to portray the lottery deal as something other than borrowing, but borrowing it is. The state would change the game's rules in ways designed to attract more business, then lean on private investors for $15 billion in up-front payments. That advance on lottery revenues would be repaid over 30 years from the new proceeds generated by the changes. But the up-front money runs out after three years, and guess what happens then: Yup: the budget deficit reappears, unless there's an economic miracle between now and then. Ironically, if there were an economic surge and the governor's revenue-averaging proposal were in place, the state couldn't spend the new money and would still be left with a shortfall to cover. That persistent shortfall, at least according to the governor's numbers, is in the range of about $5 billion to $6 billion a year. Fixing that would be the next governor's problem.

Schwarzenegger started off saying he was going to "blow up the boxes" in Sacramento. He barely tried. He said he would be the "Collectinator" and end the state's donor status with respect to the federal government. Didn't happen. This year he said the time had come for budget reform. He offered the same answer as he has in previous years. He's even trying to shake down the state into accepting his borrow-and-spend proposal with the lottery, by raising the spectre of a regressive across-the-board sales tax if the voters knock it down in November.

He's a coward. He doesn't want to be responsible for fixing the budget permanently, so he wants to pass off the problem to his successor. He doesn't want his legacy besmirched, so he pulled back on the proposal to close parks or suspend Prop. 98. He just wants to tour the world and appear on magazine covers, without having to do any of that nasty business of governing. Nobody could be worse for this state at this time of crisis.

Loyalty Is Thicker Than Blood

At Calitics we've amply covered the long and winding road that led to the rejection of the 241 Toll Road through San Onofre State Park. Members of the state parks commission showed a lot of courage in siding against big business and powerful interests in Sacramento to come out against the plan. In 2005 they passed a resolution opposing it, and they signed on to a lawsuit attempting to stop construction, before the California Coastal Commission eventually voted it down. Here is how the Governor rewarded a couple of them, including a movie pal and his own brother-in-law:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has dropped his brother-in-law, Bobby Shriver, and fellow action hero Clint Eastwood from the state parks commission after their vigorous opposition helped derail a plan for a toll road through San Onofre State Beach in San Diego County.

The decision not to renew the commissioners' terms, which expired last week, surprised observers and sent a strong signal that the governor expects loyalty from political appointees.

"This is a warning shot from the governor's office to all of his appointees: Do what I say, no matter how stupid it is," said Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles. "And I know of no project more destructive to the California coast than this toll road project."

Shriver is one of my city councilmen here in Santa Monica (and as a measure of Santa Monica, he's considered one of the more conservative ones). Shriver and Eastwood weren't just two members of the board - they were the chairman and vice-chairman, and both of them wished to stay on for another term.

By the way, these aren't the only appointees who have been "terminated" by Schwarzenegger after they crossed him.

Shriver and Eastwood join a list of other spurned appointees.

Bilenda Harris-Ritter, a former member of the state Board of Parole Hearings, said she received a call from a member of the governor's office a little more than a year ago asking her to resign, six months after she had been appointed. No explanation was given, she said.

The call coincided with an Internet campaign from a crime victims group asking the governor's office to remove her for granting parole to too many prisoners [...]

In June, the chairman of the state's Air Resources Board, Robert F. Sawyer, was fired by Schwarzenegger for pushing for antipollution measures beyond what the governor's office wanted, Sawyer said. The executive director, Catherine Witherspoon, quit in the aftermath.

In September, R. Judd Hanna quit the Fish and Game Commission at the request of an aide to the governor, after Republican lawmakers urged his ouster because he had sought to ban lead bullets in condor territory.

This is a pattern of arrogance and of demanding loyalty. It's pretty obvious and sloppy.

Sunday In The Park With Nobody

I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon at Will Rogers State Park. Named after the famed humorist (he coined the phrase "I don't belong to any organized party; I'm a Democrat"), the park stretches across the Santa Monica Mountains and offers stunning views of both the Pacific Ocean and the city of Los Angeles. And it is one of the 48 parks scheduled for closure.

The official reason for the closure is that the park doesn't make enough money to cover its own overhead costs. Apparently state parks now need to be money makers instead of gifts to the people of California. There's a $7 parking fee but no entry fee; people entering the park on foot pay nothing. With a small residential community nearby, plenty of people just leave their cars a few blocks away and walk into the park for free. According to 2006-20007 statistics, 28% of the park's entrants were walk-ins. Seems to me that there's a fairly simple solution here that would relieve residential congestion and keep the park afloat, but what do I know, I just write for the Internets.

What struck me was the large number of people out for the afternoon. I don't know if it was because of the notice of impending closure or not, but this is not a portrait of a struggling piece of public land that needs to be shuttered. There were hundreds of people playing soccer at the polo fields, hiking, and touring the fully restored 31-room ranch house. There's another point to be made here. The grounds of the park include part of the 55-mile Backbone Trail which connects several state parks together along the Santa Monica Mountains. It's not entirely clear where one park ends and another begins, and putting up a chain to cordon off the closed portions isn't really going to stop anyone. In other words, you're going to simply have an unsupervised park still used by hikers, decreasing public safety while saving very little, perhaps a half-million dollars in maintenance, which could certainly be less if the parking fee was an entrance fee.

The point is this. Will Rogers' widow offered the preserve as a gift to the people of California (the family is still fighting to keep it open). The park system is part of the California dream, part of what makes the state so unique in its diversity, its landscape, its opportunity for activity. In California, you can sunbathe in the morning and be on the ski slopes by sundown. If we can't "afford" the natural beauty of the state park system, we've done something terribly wrong, and every Californian has a stake in opening up the land and keeping it available for recreation.

The austere, cuts-only budget will hurt people in a variety of different ways, most of them more profoundly than by closing 48 parks. But the symbolism of having to close the land, having to close the ocean view, having to close part of what makes California what it is, this is truly ignominious. And at some point, you'd think Californians would hold their leaders responsible for this shame.