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SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- It's Sunday night in Sacramento, the eve of the first floor votes on California's long-overdue budget, and the Legislature's lawyers work feverishly through the night: They are drawing up the formal language of the budget bill and an array of accompanying bills called "trailers" that make the necessary changes in the law to put the budget into effect.

The Capitol is dark, but the staff attorneys in the office building at 10th and L have their lights well lit as they scan the mounds of paper that will be transformed into bills ready for action. The late-night toil on the night before a budget vote is an old ritual in Sacramento.

What happens Monday also is a time-honored ritual in the Capitol. Both houses will vote on -- and approve -- the budget.

But not before members of both parties hold interminable closed-door strategy sessions. Not before many legislators use the budget as an opportunity to launch partisan attacks and capture media attention in their home districts. Not before lawmakers try procedural maneuvers in order to place rivals in tough political positions.

On the day a budget goes to the floors of the Legislature for votes, schedules are tossed aside and time becomes meaningless. Lawmakers will hold caucuses for hours, reappear briefly on the floor, then decide to meet again on another issue and go behind closed doors. If an unexpected issue arises, the parties usually hold more caucuses to decide on a common voting strategy. Inevitably, glitches arise in issues that appeared earlier to be resolved, sending the houses into confusion and delay.

It may come as a surprise to the public watching the budget debates on television, but rarely is a lawmaker's vote influenced by the speech-making on the floors of the Legislature. The votes were wrapped up days ago, when Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature's leaders reached agreement on key components of the budget, such as a $1.4 billion tax cut, and told the rank-and-file how to vote.

In short, approval of the state budget is far more a political act than a fiscal act. Few Californians know what is in the 3-inch-thick budget, but many know how their representatives vote on it. The budget vote is probably a lawmaker's single most important vote of the year, not because of what's in the spending plan but because the vote often becomes a significant political issue.

The California budget, about $76 billion as revised, was supposed to be in place on July 1. But partisanship held sway and lawmakers were unable to decide how to spend billions of dollars in new revenue created by California's healthy economy. Forty days later, the public will finally hear the budget debated in an open forum, but by now the debate is virtually meaningless. No minds will be changed, mistakes won't be corrected, and it's too late for constituents to write their lawmakers and urge them how to vote.

Despite all the impassioned arguments, the debate on the budget isn't really a debate at all. It's more of a rubber stamping by the Legislature to ratify the decisions of their leaders.

While I must agree with you that Dan Lungren was the decisive winner of the debate [see August 3, 1998 issue of Capitol Action Weekly], Dan Lungren did not come across well on television.

The sweat pouring off his body reminded me of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. The image Lungren projected would give him a very low Q-rating.   He needs better image consultants to solve these problems.

-Don Nelson

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