brown balancing the budget will be a nixon goes to china moment.

to the unemployed in California.

I’ve been working on an novel about Alternate Universes and realities… is it possible that I’ve actually woken up in the one where politicians – California politicians of all things! – actually keep their word?

Nah, they’ll eventually vote to give themselves back-pay with interest…

They’ll surely get back pay, probably with ‘performance bonuses’ once they finally produce an acceptable budget.

Now if the rules truly cut their pay, I’d be impressed.

It’s been nice knowing ya, John Chiang. Now, you’d better go get your resume in order ‘cuz you are gonna be fired for doing your job and upholding the law.

Disneyland won’t be as crowded?

Here’s the actual text of the law that forfeits their pay. It specifically states that they won’t get any retroactive pay:

“(h) Notwithstanding any other provision of law or of this Constitution, including subdivision (c) of this section, Section 4 of this article, and Sections 4 and 8 of Article III, in any year in which the budget bill is not passed by the Legislature by midnight on June 15, there shall be no appropriation from the current budget or future budget to pay any salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses for Members of the Legislature during any regular or special session for the period from midnight on June 15 until the day that the budget bill is presented to the Governor. No salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses forfeited pursuant to this subdivision shall be paid retroactively.”

—-

But if you look at the next section, you can see how they plan on getting around that. Some of them are already squawking about how forfeiting pay is illegal, so no doubt they will take it to Court:

“SECTION 5. Severability.

If any of the provisions of this measure or the applicability of any provision of this measure to any person or circumstances shall be found to be unconstitutional or otherwise invalid, such finding shall not affect the remaining provisions or applications of this measure to other persons or circumstances, and to that extent the provisions of this measure are deemed to be severable. ”

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Text_of_Proposition_25,_the_%22On-Time_Budget_Act_of_2010%22_%28California%29

The California Dem’s previously supported the underlying legislation believing it to be an invaluable tool in forcing the Republicans into budget compromises in the face of losing pay. Wrong, the Rep’s stood firm. Then the Dems wrongly assumed that they could push through a budget bill meeting the June 15 deadline despite being replete with unlawful tax increases and impositions — for failing to achieve 2/3s support — and without actually complying with the “balanced” requirement thinking that our democrat governor would play along. The Dems also wrongly assumed that the democrat controller would never withhold their pay. For those keeping score, that is a hat-trick of own goals.

As to the issue of recovering pay, although the legislation provides for severability, I doubt that they will choose to push that through to get their greedy little hands on the lost income before acting to pass a lawful, balanced budget. To do so would be political suicide even in here in the people’s republic of California.