Arnold Getting Local on Budget
It has been interesting tracking Arnold's time management lately. He is attempting to balance his legislative priorities with helping speed the passage of the budget. Arnold knows that he can't get anything done until the budget is signed, yet he has found little leverage over the right-wing Republican holdouts.
Last week he spent several days visiting nursing homes and other sites that are directly feeling the impact of not receiving the money they are owed by the state. He strategically selected the locations for maximum impact on the Senate Republicans. They are still attempting to shake it off, and close their ears from the thousands of small business owners shouldering the burdens of the missing budget. It's folks like Janet Rios, featured in today's LAT who are feeling the most pain, especially fiscally:
By the time a state budget is passed, Janet Rios will be at least $4,000 poorer. That's the 19% in interest Rios says she must pay on loans to keep her two nursing homes afloat until lawmakers can agree on a spending plan.
Rios would seem to be a welcome client for any bank. The state pays her to take care of the elderly, and once the budget impasse is broken she'll get a bundle of money that has been delayed. She just needed emergency funds in the meantime to pay the Stockton homes' bills.
The state offered to guarantee the money in a letter she could take to her bank, Wells Fargo. But "they said that is not an acceptable thing to base a loan on," she said, and classified her as a high risk, with an interest rate to match on two $100,000 lines of credit.
The state won't reimburse her for the interest. Still, she said, she had no choice but to take the bank's terms. "We have to take care of 15 residents in wheelchairs. We have people getting fed through tubes in their stomachs. Some have seizures. Some need oxygen. There are a bunch of things we have to do. Nobody cuts us any slack."
The big companies and institutions who have pre-arranged credit, just in case of this type of situation. Most small contractors, nursing homes, clinics and day-care centers do not have that ability, so they fall between the cracks and rack up thousands of dollars in interest in order to keep their doors open. That is money that will come directly out of their programs, a needless waste of money.
Meanwhile, Arnold has attempted a new approach for local leverage. LADN:
While the governor toured the state to emphasize the impact of the budget stalemate, his office called on local officials - particularly Republicans - to get on the bandwagon and try to convince GOP lawmakers to vote on the spending plan.
Among them were Los Angeles City Councilmen Greig Smith and Dennis Zine. While the council is nonpartisan, the two are seen as among the most fiscally conservative.
"They didn't ask the councilman to make any calls to legislators but to issue a statement on the impact locally," said Mitch Englander, chief deputy to Smith.
"One example of the impact is we have three (improvement) projects for Balboa Boulevard that might not get done because of the holdup in the budget."
It is unclear if Smith and Zine will actually heed the governor's request. Failing to do so would allow their political opponents to claim that they are siding with extremists within the Republican party.