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Reporting from Sacramento -- As California's government continued its grinding downshift toward insolvency, efforts to close the state's nearly $42-billion budget gap hit a new snag late Tuesday as Republicans in the state Senate ousted their leader.

Around 11 p.m., a group of GOP senators, unhappy with the higher taxes that Senate leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto agreed to as part of a deal with the governor and Democrats, voted to replace him in a private caucus meeting in Cogdill's office.

They chose Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, a staunchly antitax lawmaker from Murrieta, as their new leader.

Cogdill's ouster could be a major setback to budget negotiations. Cogdill was a lead negotiator on the budget package and had committed to voting for it. Hollingsworth will likely try to renegotiate the deal, which lawmakers spent three months forging.

"It's a shame it ended this way," Cogdill said to reporters. "This budget needs to get out, and we need to put people to work again in this state."

Hollingsworth said he does not want to see a tax increase passed, but he offered no plan for resolving the budget crisis.

"All of that will be determined in the next couple of days," he said.

Soon after the leadership change, lawmakers returned to the Senate chamber, where they voted down the $14.4 billion in proposed tax hikes that are part of the budget package. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders have been trying to get the package approved since Saturday.

The vote, concluded shortly after 1 a.m., was the first on the tax hikes, which had been set aside as the governor and party leaders scurried to round up the three Senate GOP votes needed to pass the spending plan.

That plan could still survive the leadership change. Three GOP senators abstained from voting this morning. They also refused to take part in Cogdill's ouster, sitting out the caucus vote on his replacement. Those lawmakers have been in negotiations with the governor and Democrats about possibly supporting the bipartisan budget plan.

A fourth GOP lawmaker, Sen Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria), voted against the taxes this morning but has stated publicly that he might support them if various government reforms were added to the package. He was sharply critical of his caucus for removing Cogdill.

"I just can't believe in the middle of the night we'd oust our leader," he said outside the caucus meeting. "It's the wrong time to make a change in this process."

The frenetic day had begun with legislators carting sleeping bags, pillows and suitcases to work. Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) brought a bottle of cologne. Republican Sen. Sam Aanestad, an oral surgeon from Grass Valley, passed out toothbrushes. Cots were ordered from the state Office of Emergency Services.

The anticipated Senate floor vote hopscotched from the morning into the afternoon and then to late night, as tempers frayed. In the middle of it all, as lawmakers struggled to keep California's fiscal fortunes from plummeting earthward, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took a few moments to honor the Bay Area pilot who safely belly-landed a disabled US Airways jet into the Hudson River last month.

At stake is a plan supported by Democrats and Schwarzenegger, a GOP moderate, that calls for a 1 cent increase in the sales tax, a 12-cents-per-gallon gas tax boost and hikes in vehicle license fees and the personal income tax.

"We need to stop treating the taxpayers across California like a personal ATM," Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) said from the Senate floor, hands pounding the air to drive home his point.

"This is a balanced package," countered Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny (D-San Diego), fixing her gaze on the Republicans across the aisle. "It asks everybody to pay a little bit more in a variety of ways."

"This budget is not fair and balanced," scoffed Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater).

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), noting that Cogdill helped negotiate the budget and pledged to vote for it, said the Republican's caucus mates should join him -- or replace him.

"You ought to follow your leader or choose a new one," Leno said.

Off the floor, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) warned of "catastrophic consequences" if a budget isn't approved. The crisis has already crimped funding for $7 billion in highway work and other government projects and delayed $3 billion in tax refunds, welfare checks and other payments.

The state may soon have to issue IOUs, and 10,000 workers risk losing their jobs.

With Steinberg vowing to keep lawmakers locked in the Capitol until the crisis was resolved, Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) grumbled, "I've been locked down for 30 hours, and it's not pretty. . . . You've got to sleep in your suit."

In a bid to end the stalemate, Schwarzenegger met in his office with Sen. Dave Cox of Sacramento, a white-haired GOP veteran in his final term.

The governor and Democrats hoped to persuade either Cox or Maldonado to join Cogdill and GOP Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield to help push the budget through. Three Republican votes are needed in each house to pass spending plans; legislative leaders say they have the votes in the Assembly.

"It's a huge responsibility and it's people's careers on the line," Schwarzenegger told The Times, alluding to threats by conservative bloggers and talk-radio hosts to retaliate against Republicans who vote for more taxes. "But I think in the end they know they have to make a decision what's best for the state."

Steinberg, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly minority leader Mike Villines (R-Clovis) also shuttled in and out of the governor's office as the evening wore on. "In my view, there has to be definition tonight about how this is going to end," Steinberg said outside Schwarzenegger's office, adding that "some very positive, quiet discussions" were underway.

"It is always a very delicate balance," he said, "between pushing hard and then allowing for the conversations to happen around what any member needs."

Earlier in the day, Cox denounced the tax proposal hammered out in recent weeks by Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders. He called the higher levies "the straw that broke the camel's back."

"My concern is it does not fix the problem," Cox said on the Senate floor. "As a matter of fact it may well make the matter worse."

Maldonado, meanwhile, has pressed for a shift to open primary elections that could give moderates a better shot at public office. "I'm only asking for some simple government reforms," Maldonado said.

The fiscal mess even seeped into the Capitol celebration the governor hosted for US Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III, the pilot who guided a jetliner full of passengers to safety in New York City after the plane's engines failed.

Schwarzenegger said negotiating lawmakers "need a great hero in the state Capitol" to inspire them.

And Steinberg suggested to Sullenberger, who appeared a bit bewildered by his brush with statehouse politics, that the pilot might be needed to guide the Senate to a safe landing. "Maybe after we're done here," Steinberg said, "you could just come upstairs and say 'Aye,' one time."

The audience broke up in laughter.

frigidmagi wrote:It is my understanding that it would take near a military coup to get rid of the referendums, is that true?

General Havoc wrote:The irony is that the referendum system exists as it does because the alternative is actually worse. I know how unbelievable that must seem, but the state constitution was changed to permit this sort of thing because the politicians were so incompetent that this was the only way to get anything done. For obvious reasons, this is a terrible way to run a state, but the state's government, regardless of party, has been so useless for the last forty years, that I really don't know what other option there is.

General Havoc wrote:Well permit me to suggest Cyncat that the politics of British Colombia and California might be slightly different from one another. Merely because your political dogma insists that a thing should be true does not automatically make it so in practice everywhere in the fucking world.

The referendum system didn't gerrymander every district in the state to the point where seats change hands about as regularly as the passage of Halley's Comet. The referendum system didn't radicalize both parties to the point where neither of them could see past their own ideological blinkers, nor did it institute the 30-year policy of legalized bribery that existed between the California Democratic Party and the various unions that they pay. The referendum system didn't spawn the entirely fictitious California Energy Crisis, nor did it drive PG&E into bankruptcy, nor, incidentally, is it the cause of the current budget woes that California is undergoing.

But "you must go back to doing the very things that this system was put in place to fix because I said so," cuts no ice either. Find me a system that works, and does not involve the same gang of radicalized idiots using the powers given to them to screw the entire state, and I will vote for it. Until then, this system stays.