Our new State Senator Tony Strickland stood in lockstep along his extremist Republican friends and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association this week in announcing they were suing to stop a California state budget plan by the Democrats. Perhaps coincidentally, he is positioned at the “far right” of the photo above.
The plan, passed by both houses, was a move by the majority Democrats to get something through the pipeline quickly before the state runs out of money. The lack of an approved revised budget costs taxpayers $40 million every day and the state has already announced that it will shut down offices the first and third Fridays of every month and has canceled $3.8 billion for 2,000 public infrastructure projects.
The budget was immediately challenged by Republicans. They viewed it as unconstitutional because of its reliance on fees which don’t require a two-thirds approval by the legislature. But the state’s 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento quickly ruled Wednesday it could not intervene because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had not signed the bill into law. Strickland and friends vowed to continue the fight anyway.
The minority Republicans have proposed an alternative budget with a devastating $10.6 billion cut to K-12 schools and community colleges, more than double that called for in the Democrats’ plan. Eighty percent of respondents to a recent Field Poll conducted in the state opposed cuts to education.
What happened to the campaign promises of the state senator who just barely beat his Democratic opponent? Strickland billed himself as “independent” and someone who would “reach across party lines to get the job done.”
Looks like the only reach he’s made is in floating bogus campaign promises.
