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Earlier this month, the panel that sets lawmakers' compensation spared them from any further salary reduction. Here are some more modest proposals to squeeze legislators:
• If they're not at work in official session at the Capitol, take away the per diem. The compensation panel is looking at this issue, in response to a Los Angeles Times report that former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass collected her per diem while campaigning for Congress for a month.
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This is not a year when editorial boards and good government types can rear back on their high horses and demand a clean, gimmick-free budget. Yet that doesn't mean that anything will do. Unless they want the state to again teeter toward insolvency, lawmakers must act to close the deficit. Here are some principles that should guide them:
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A new forecast of the Unemployment Insurance Fund's long-term condition, published by the Employment Development Department, says the UIF's deficit, which was $6.2 billion at the end of 2009, is expected to hit $15.3 billion by the end of this year and $20.9 billion by the end of 2011.
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An initiative to lower the legislative vote threshold for passing a budget from two-thirds to a majority vote has qualified for the November ballot.
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The state has sought to sell the fairgrounds as part of a program to liquidate state assets to raise money for the deficit-riddled state budget.
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