By Tim Redmond
The governor agreed to cut $1.2 billion out of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilition budget this summer, but ducked the tough question of how to do it, leaving that up to the Legislature — which also can’t quite reach an answer. A moderate, watered-down bill that Speaker Karen Bass pulled together scraped through the Assembly, but is stuck, like so many other bills, in battles over the final language. As Brian at Calitics puts it:
The Assembly plan doesn’t have enough cost savings (or enough spine) and the Senate seems reluctant to pull the trigger on a half measure
Some weak Democrats, including Fiona Ma, refused to vote for the moderate bill, and now the Senate leaders are saying they want a stronger bill, which gives some of them a reason to vote against it. It takes political courage (and common sense) to recognize that most inmates are getting out anyway, and that early, supervised releases of nonviolent prisoners isn’t going to harm the public in any way.
So if nothing happens here, we’ll be stuck this fall with a big problem: A $1.2 billion hole in the state budget, and no plans to fix it.