State legislature
Both candidates have taken turns heaping blame on the perennially maligned state legislature, and for his part, Brown is selling his experience as the key to uniting the partisan body around a common cause.
Brown has consistently advocated engaging the legislature earlier in the budget process, saying he would meet with them in small and large groups in order to forge compromises. His talking points often fall back on his lifelong experience in politics, which he says give him the insight to get the legislature in line.
He has criticized opponent Meg Whitman’s harsh language, arguing that diplomacy is a more effective approach to working with legislative leaders.
After initially saying he could work within the two-thirds supermajority required to pass the budget, he more recently said he supports a ballot measure that would require a simple majority vote to pass the budget.
He has said that budget cutting must start with the legislature and governor’s office and proposed encouraging legislators to forgo perks such as state vehicles and private air travel.
Brown has also consistently expressed a desire to shift authority away from state-level government and toward local officeholders. This, of course, includes the legislature, which he has ridiculed for passing frivolous bills.
Key statements
Jerry Brown
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July 30, 2010In other matters Thursday, Brown said he favored a proposed ballot measure eliminating California's requirement that budgets be approved by two-thirds of the Legislature. Whitman opposes the idea of requiring only a simple majority.
Source: San Jose Mercury NewsTags: Budget, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Jerry Brown
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June 30, 2010Well, because you have to start at the top, I'd start with the governor's office, I'd cut that to the maximum degree. Same with the legislature - get rid of the perks. We need a period of austerity by the leadership to communicate the message that we're doing everything we can. And this is a big budget. It's $100 billion, just in the general fund in spending, more in special funds.
Source: CNBCTags: Budget, Specific policy point or details
Jerry Brown
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June 15, 2010Predicting that lawmakers will miss Tuesday's budget deadline, he ridiculed legislators for taking too long and having the wrong priorities: "There is a speech to the Legislature [early in the year], and then they all go home. They have 4,000 bills that are urgent. They've got to get helmets on young skiers even though we haven't had to do that for 100 years. They have to worry about cigarette butts on the beach."
Source: PolitiCal (Los Angeles Times)Tags: Budget, State legislature, Policy or issue position, Quotable
Jerry Brown
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June 6, 2010Third, we need to change the way we govern this state. For example, we must – whenever possible – shift authority away from Sacramento and instead give local governments and school boards the ability to control their own affairs. This is the way it used to be, but in recent years Sacramento has taken on more and more power. I will fight to give schools, cities and counties the discretion they need to solve problems locally and closest to those affected.
Source: Jerry Brown campaignTags: Leadership style, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Jerry Brown
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May 18, 2010A lot of them are talking about regulation, and I know. I was the mayor of Oakland. There are plenty of stupid regulations. I got that. But you know what? There are some smart regulations. Like the one that stopped off-shore drilling in California. That's a good regulation. And how about making the regulation work? If they were doing that in the Gulf, we wouldn't have the spill out there, but they're let business, they know best. We only need police out on the street. Well we need police in the corporate suites just as much because boy they can rip you off. You know, walk down the wrong street and someone can hit you over the head, take your money, take your life. Well on Wall Street, they really ripped us off. It's the greatest bank robbery in the history of the United States and the world. $11 trillion. There's 11 trillion fewer dollars, that's about an 18 percent reduction in our wealth. That's a big pay cut for America and that was created by some of the same characters that are promoting these Republicans. There's two people I'll mention: Whitman and Poizner.
Source: Citizen submissionTags: Business, Crime, Environment, Government services, State legislature, Policy or issue position
Jerry Brown
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May 18, 2010Right now only 9 percent of the people have a favorable impression of the legislature. About 25 percent have a positive impression about the Congress. That's dangerous. In a democracy, if the mechanism of our collective decision making is so discredited, what does that say about the viability of our whole set of free institutions. It is dangerous and you have a stake in this. Your future is at stake here. It's at stake by the threat of the continuing corruption of the political process, the degeneration of political discourse into these manipulative 30-second pieces.
Source: Citizen submissionTags: Campaigns and politics, State legislature, Assertion of fact
Clearly aware of the legislature’s rock-bottom approval rating, Whitman has sharply attacked the lawmaking body throughout her campaign, depicting it as a “bill factory” and scolding lawmakers for not acting more urgently to fix the budget crisis.
She has threatened to veto bills not related to job creation, education or cutting state spending. At one point, she proposed creating a set of legislative teams focused on each of the priorities.
During this summer’s perennial budget stalemate, Whitman has often criticized legislators for not working hard enough to reach consensus. Like Brown, she favors beginning the budget process earlier. She also suggested not allowing them to travel home using taxpayer funds, draw per diem allowances or engage in political fund-raising while late budget negotiations were ongoing. She has not presented a plan for accomplishing those goals but said she would support measures to do so.
She supports a constitutional amendment to turn the legislature into a part-time body and greatly reduce the salaries of its members, striking an adversarial tone in her policy booklet: “We need citizen legislators, not professional politicians. It’s time to ‘Cut Their Pay and Send Them Home.’”
Like her Republican colleagues, Whitman supports maintaining the two-thirds vote required to pass the state budget.
Key statements
Meg Whitman
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Sept. 1, 2010"The inability of California's legislature to pass a budget on time is a profound failure of leadership. The budget process begins in January and must be treated with urgency at that point - not months later. For too long, Sacramento politicians have not been held accountable for failing to pass a budget by the Constitutional deadline of June 15th. If I am elected Governor, I will work toward an on-time budget each and every year. But if we don't have a new budget by the start of the new fiscal year my first year as Governor, then I will support measures to ensure that for each day that California goes without a budget after July 1st, legislators would be prohibited from fundraising, they would forfeit their pay and tax-free per diem and they would lose taxpayer-funded travel to their districts. The bottom line is that taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook to pay politicians while they're missing budget deadlines and damaging the stability and fiscal health of the state.
Source: Meg Whitman campaignTags: Budget, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Meg Whitman
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Sept. 1, 2010Whitman opposes reducing the two-thirds threshold, believing it is an "important taxpayer protection that she believes needs to remain in place" spokeswoman Sarah Pompei said. Whitman has no official position on Proposition 25.
Source: Sacramento BeeTags: Budget, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Meg Whitman
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Sept. 1, 2010“There needs to be five meetings a week of the Big 5,” she said. “The Big 5 would have been in the governor's office, under my leadership, every day. I would have chained them to the desk to get this done.
Source: Los Angeles TimesTags: Budget, Leadership style, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Meg Whitman
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Aug. 10, 2010The way we're going to work with the Legislature is focus this Legislature on the things that matter most to Californians. And we have got to stop the bill factory that's taken hold of Sacramento. We've got to focus on the things that matter most, and I will use the veto pen to make sure that we can bring Democrats and Republicans together to hold on to jobs in California, to fix our education system and to make the government run more efficiently.
Source: KUSI (San Diego)Tags: Jobs, Leadership style, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Meg Whitman
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June 4, 2010With regard to the legislature, the governor has to work with the legislature, but everyone forgets the legislature has to work with the governor. We've got a very powerful veto pen Mark. And I want to veto virtually every piece of legislation that isn't on point to jobs and spending and education. We've got to be vetoing things that are not priorities for Californians. And the legislature can be encouraged to do this, because do you know what their approval rating is right now? 9 percent. I used to travel with John McCain who used to say, 'We're down to blood relatives and paid staffers.' So, let's get this legislature focused on things that matter most to Californians and not distracted by the length of cow tails, by plastic bags, by renaming highways for disgraced politicians.
Source: Mark Larson ShowTags: Leadership style, State legislature, Specific policy point or details
Meg Whitman
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March 16, 2010Turn Sacramento Into a Part-Time Legislature. Meg will support a constitutional amendment that would turn California’s full-time Legislature into a part-time Legislature with a greatly reduced salary. If serving in Sacramento were a part-time job, maybe we wouldn’t have so many full-time spenders in the Capitol. We need citizen legislators, not professional politicians. It’s time to “Cut Their Pay and Send Them Home.”
Source: Meg Whitman campaignTags: State legislature, Promise
