The California legislature has approved yet another so-called on-time state budget. Wink, wink. It’s barely a half-baked budget.

Voters passed a ballot measure in 2010 that required lawmakers to approve an annual budget before June 15 or they would not be paid.

Since then they follow the letter of the law, but not the spirit. In party-line voting, they got the broad outlines of a budget ahead of their deadline, but without the necessary details on much-disputed points.

In the Capitol, it’s called the payroll budget.

The negotiated details will come later in the trailer bills. And dollar amounts are updated in a budget junior that changes the original salary version.

So the politicians have found a legal way to circumvent the voter decision. They are still being paid, but it has become customary for the budget that takes effect on July 1 not to be fully finalized until the end of August or even September, at the end of the legislature’s annual session.

However, the truth is that their new budgeting process is still much better than the irresponsible, corrupt games that took place before voters passed the 2010 reforms.

The most important reform was lowering the votes required to pass legislation from a budget to a simple majority. Before that, the budget required a steep two-thirds supermajority, an increasingly impossible vote with no pig payouts to some legislators that only pushed spending.

The budget was invariably held hostage by legislators, usually Republicans from a minority party seeking special deals for their districts or political favors for themselves.

The governor and legislative leaders bickered well into Sacramento’s steamy summer.

There was a theory that the Central Valley’s relentless sun seared the brains of politicians. Noggins baked, legislators heard devil music and they did the dance of death.

A senior legislative staff once explained the ritual to me this way: Everyone dances around the fire. They throw stuff at us. We throw things at them. Everyone drops dead and we start all over again.

It made for easy column writing, but poor governance.

In most years between 1990 and 2010, no part of the budget was adopted until at least July, and often in August or September even once in October.

Thousands of private sellers who supplied the state with goods and services were punished after July 1. One summer, state workers were given IOUs instead of paychecks. International financiers once showed up to audit the budget and demanded proof that Sacramento could pay back borrowed money, as if it were a third world country.

In 2010, the state was running out of toilet paper in state parks. Or maybe.

An email circulated inside

Than-

government Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finance department read: The bottom line is that the remote rural state parks are likely to run out of toilet paper by early October. Banks had canceled the state credit card for lack of payment.

The budget was only approved in October. 7. I never checked whether it was time to replenish park privileges.

Fewer than a handful of legislators today were legislators in those bad old days.

It was a huge mess, remembers Senator Tom Umberg (D-

Orange Sinterklaas

), which was a meeting

member

in the 1990s and again in the 2000s.

Today is like the Gulf War compared to World War II.

But for a moderate Democrat from a competitive Orange County district, it can be quite an intoxicating experience, he says. i was one [reelection] goal. Republicans wouldn’t vote until I didn’t have mine. So I got a chance to deal with the governor [Republican Pete Wilson] two or three times and get the reading:

You were on duty. You understand that sometimes you have to make sacrifices. This is a time when people’s steadfastness is tested. blah,

B

blah,

B

bla. I voted for it.

Senator John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) was the chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee in 2008.

It was painful because we had no control over it, he says of the summer-long stalemate.

I got problems with [then-Speaker, now Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass for going to Obama’s Democratic convention. The budget was not passed and I was in Denver. The appearance was not good. I came back and missed Obama’s historic acceptance speech. I wasn’t even allowed to vote. It was crazy.

Senator Roger W. Niello (R-Fair Oaks) was up

a

Edit

member

at the start of the Great Recession, one of the few current legislators to have served in the legislature when it faced massive deficits and was forced to make major budget cuts.

It was frustrating, he says. The voters became nervous. They would tell me I sent you there to do your job. I would answer: we could have passed a budget on June 30 if we had agreed to these things. Then they would say

m

Maybe it was worth persevering.

At least by the June 15 deadline this year, the legislature passed the basic framework of a $312 billion budget.

Gavin Newsom administration and legislative leaders, all Democrats, are still negotiating important issues. They include spending on child care, health care and transportation, plus prison closures and the governor’s proposal to streamline major infrastructure projects and reduce delays in environmental litigation.

The process is too secretive and exclusive. Republicans are ignored because their meager votes are unnecessary. That’s a shame because the budget goes too far to the left.

But overall, today’s budgeting has vastly improved from the bitterness and chaos of the past. At least the state is now able to provide park visitors with toilet paper.