Capitol Alert: Willie Brown: Legislators should have OK'd Schwarzenegger budget

By Susan Ferriss
sferriss@sacbee.com

When former Assembly speaker Willie Brown was back at the Capitol yesterday, he told reporters he didn't have any advice for Democratic legislative leaders sparring with Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over the state budget.

The former speaker, who held that job from 1981 to 1995, said he wasn't close enough to the action now.

But wait. Brown couldn't help himself. It turns out he thinks Democrats may have missed a chess move.

Back in May, the governor unveiled his May revision of his proposed state budget. To help fill a $19 billion-plus hole, Schwarzenegger proposed cuts many Democrats and health advocates instantly denounced as unreal and draconian, including the complete elimination of the state's welfare-to-work program.

Brown thinks legislators should have taken the bait.

"The Legislature should have simply, in my opinion, passed his budget, just as he submitted it," Brown said. "I know people will jump off the bridge when they hear that. But I'm telling you, I don't think Republicans would vote for it. But he submitted the budget. Give him the budget. You'll have plenty of time to make the appropriate adjustments, and so will he."

The budget the governor unveiled in May would have made California the only U.S. without a welfare-to-work program.

Schwarzenegger said Thursday he won't sign a budget unless lawmakers and unions roll back public-employee pensions to less generous terms that existed before a 1999 law was passed. Brown thinks Schwarzenegger means it.

"This guy is different from previous governors," he said. "He kind of says what he means."

PHOTO CREDIT: Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, walks past charts that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to illustrate the need for pension reform during a roundtable meeting yesterday at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Hector Amezcua / hamezcua@sacbee.com