Over at his Capitol Notes blog, KQED’s ever-prescient John Myers raises the question of Jerry Brown calling for a special election early next summer to deal with California’s ongoing budget mess, assuming he defeats Meg Whitman.
The scenario would go something like this:
1) Jerry wins on Nov. 2 and gets to work right away on the budget;
2) Come next spring, after he’s crunched the numbers, the new guv puts his cards on the table: this is gonna be tough, it’s gonna be painful, and it’s gonna include higher taxes . . . but you, the voters, get to decide if indeed you want said higher taxes.
3) Jerry calls for a special election in early- to mid-March, and hopes to get a vote done by June 15, which is the constitutional deadline for the Legislature ratifying a new budget (a deadline lawmakers have missed 19 of the last 20 times).
4) Voters approve the plan, budget chaos is avoided, church bells toll, exuberant citizens take to the street to celebrate their exalted governor, newborn sons are named Edmund, Linda Ronstadt albums fly offthe shelf.
Ok, I apologize for the sarcasm. But it is easy to punch holes in Brown’s plans.
