Monday, June 16, 2003 4:27 PM
BY JILL STEWART
Governor Gray Davis says he is rethinking his plan to wipe out funding for the posting of public meeting agendas, a cut Davis had pro- posed as a way to help balance the gaping $38.5 billion budget deficit.
The conventional wisdom is that Davis was dead-serious about his controversial plan, but is reconsidering because of the outcry from media, politicians and others.
As I noted in a recent column (www.jill- stewart.net), which examines the power elite in the statehouse, Davis may be employing a little-reported tactic to intentionally upset the media, and does not really intend to follow through.
In Sacramento, I argued, it’s about frighten- ing skeptical reporters and editorial boards into believing the budget has been cut to the bone.
Steve Peace, Davis’ budget czar, was testi- fying before a committee recently when Senator Ross Johnson asked Peace why the Legislature has been denied access to sup- pressed reports from California government departments on how they would cut 10 per- cent of costs.
I wrote:
“That’s when Peace admitted an amazing thing. He told the Senate Rules Committee that the reports are so filled with lies about what would have to be cut that the governor has no intention of releasing them in that condition to the Legislature.
`They purposely salt them with what we call Mount Rushmores—we’d have to close Mount Rushmore! … in order to get the media whipped up over things that nobody ever intends to cut out,’ Peace said grimly. “They purposely put in cuts of very high pri- ority [to society], things we want to protect, while stepping over the low-priority things that actually can be cut.’ “
Every branch of government employs the tactic, I noted. Davis’ office recently pro- posed a special $5 fee on certain library books—and promptly withdrew the fee fol- lowing easily predicted media outcry.
