California’s recent budget stalemate is nothing new to our state. In fact, it’s been happening for years and is the result of an ineffective state requirement of more than a simple majority to pass budgets. California’s two-thirds majority rule produces a drawn out circus of negotiations that lawmakers have forced us to endure nearly every year for the past 32 years. Education suffers annually from the instability and uncertainty of this process and is usually on the chopping block when Democrats make concessions to Republicans in order to win their votes - this year $11.6 billion was cut. Without a better system to pass a budget, how can we hope to address the education problems facing our state?

This year California’s stalemate was record breaking. On Friday, February 19th, lawmakers finally agreed on a combination of tax increases, spending cuts, and borrowing to eliminate California’s $41 billion dollar budget gap - after nearly a week of political horse trading in Sacramento. In the Senate, the two-thirds majority was finally reached after Democrats made adequate concessions to Senate Republican, Abel Maldonado. Maldonado joined two Republican colleagues and the Democrats to hit the needed threshold. In the end, California got a budget that resolves the shortfall but at the expense of crippling cuts pushed by the minority in order to break the stalemate. According to State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, the recent budget “essentially transfers our state cash flow problem to local schools and districts.”

Proponents of the two-thirds majority claim it is a necessary safeguard so the minority party is not irrelevant to the budget process. But what does that say about our Democracy? What about the will of the people and the candidates we vote for to represent us at the state level?

Our current system essentially tells California voters that although you elect your representatives, the minority party actually knows better than the voter what is right for California. It is a system that dilutes the power of our elected officials who are in the majority. As it currently stands, Democrats have majorities in both the state Assembly and Senate. They are prohibited, however, from passing a budget without at least a few Republican votes in both houses. Since Democrats and Republicans have very different ideas about what’s best for California, shouldn’t it be that if Republicans want a louder voice, they must win more support from Californians for their way of doing business?

The final budget wasn’t particularly palatable to either Democrats or Republicans. According to Karen Bass, Democratic Speaker of the California State Assembly, who spoke with Rachel Maddow on the eve of the final passage, “California is ready to go over a cliff and that will happen tomorrow because tomorrow, 276 more projects, which will lead to tens of thousands of people being put out of work, will be called to a halt tomorrow if we don’t get that one Republican vote tonight.”

Because of the severity of the situation, our Republican governor and legislative leaders from both parties had spent months negotiating a budget together that would fix the deficit problem and not bring state projects to a costly halt. But even teamwork could not prevent what the two-thirds majority guarantees – an obstructionist minority party has the power to bring the budget process and the state to its knees.

Although I disagree with Senator Maldonado’s need for concessions from the Democrats before doing what is right for California, it certainly took a lot of courage to join the Democrats. Maldonado, like all the Republicans in our state legislature, signed a pledge never to raise taxes. Republicans who break with the party in order to do what is right have literally been threatened by right-wing talk radio shows across the state. In her interview with Maddow, Bass described one station that posted caricatures of Republican legislators’ heads on sticks on its website, and has threatened to have them recalled.

The two-thirds majority debacle is not limited to legislators passing budgets. In 1978, Proposition 13 expanded the two-thirds vote requirement to raising any tax in the state. Last November here in Monterey County, ballot Measure Z won 62.55% of the vote to improve our roads and provide alternatives to driving. Though Measure Z was supported by all five county supervisors, Republicans and Democrats, and all 12 City Councils in the county, it still came up short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass.

Over the years many California communities have faced the same uphill battles to pass school bonds and other initiatives. When a two-thirds majority is needed, the will of the few often supersedes the good of the majority. And, when ideology obstructs logic and inhibits the state’s ability to take care of its people, we clearly have a system that is broken.

It will take a vote before the people to change the two-thirds majority rule in California. Hopefully, after this year’s budget stalemate and subsequent fallout for the state’s most vulnerable citizens, California voters will be ready to take on this campaign and vote to repeal this flawed system.

My blog is part of a month-long series on education in California,
published in partnership with the University of Phoenix and our publishing platform
Six Apart. WIP Contributor Kimberly Chase is also participating.
Be sure to look for both of our articles, as features and Talk blogs each Monday in March.