May is the traditional month for thousands of California schoolchildren to file off yellow buses and march into the state Capitol, where they are often given little folders that purport to explain what the Legislature does.
They are not told, however, about the Legislature's true and preoccupying purpose – slicing up the pie.
Pie-slicing is obvious in the budget, since absent an increase in taxes, there's about 20 percent
less revenue than the state's paper budget would spend.Those who want pieces of pie are throwing sharp elbows in the serving line, and the infighting will increase as Gov. Jerry Brown releases a revised budget today. Even judges have stepped down from their Olympian perches and into the fray.
The wrangle over taxes also is pie-slicing, since the $10 billion per year tax hike that Democrats want would be, if imposed, $10 billion less that Californians could spend elsewhere. And the same conflicts dominate other aspects, such as Brown's proposal to eliminate local redevelopment agencies and redirect their revenues elsewhere.
Beyond the budget, pie-slicing is less obvious but just as real. As private employers battle with unions, environmentalists and other liberal groups over myriad bills affecting their operations, for instance, the underlying issue is money – how much the business owners can retain and how much they must spend on employees or regulation compliance.
Even conflicts that don't obviously involve money are often exercises in pie-slicing. As myriad stakeholders fight over allocations of a water supply, for instance, they are really jousting over uses of land, which translates directly into money.
Pie-slicing is especially contentious in this era of economic recession, as last week's hearing in the Assembly Local Government Committee on two measures underscored.
One, Assembly Bill 356, was aimed at partially undoing San Francisco's new policy of requiring contractors on projects to hire San Francisco residents – even when work occurs outside the city, such as its airport in adjacent San Mateo County. A San Mateo assemblyman, Democrat Jerry Hill, is carrying AB 356. It won an 8-0 vote of approval.
Assembly Bill 720 by Assemblyman Isadore Hall, D-Compton, is even more contentious. Backed by private contractors and construction unions, it would indirectly restrict the ability of counties to use their own workers for construction projects. It draws opposition from county governments and their unionized employees but also cleared the committee on a 7-0 vote.
Another Hill bill, meanwhile, would deny employer tax breaks when a company moves from one California community to another, reacting to a San Mateo County firm's decision to move to Tulare County.
