Alarming news from California has been lost in the noise of the national election coverage. Nearly five years after ousting Gov. Gray Davis because California faced a $14 billion deficit, the state once again faces a $14 billion deficit — and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening draconian budget cuts to education and healthcare, as well as the release of thousands of prison inmates and closure of 48 state parks, just for starters.

“Is it time for Total Recall: The Sequel?”
- Lopez

During the Republicans’ phony 2003 recall election, Schwarzenegger excoriated Davis over the financial crisis, which, in reality, was caused by the simultaneous dot-com collapse and the Enron shenanigans of Dick Cheney and Ken Lay that exploded California energy costs.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez has suggested that the time might be right for another recall:

Only a year ago, Gov. Schwarzenegger was telling us we were in good shape financially, with no need for a rainy day fund. Now he says the wolf is at the door.

He’s planning to lock the gates at 48 California state parks and beaches.

And give get-out-of-jail-free cards to tens of thousands of prisoners statewide.

And slash school budgets.

These and many other draconian horrors have been proposed by the governor who rose to power on three main recall promises:

No more gaping budget holes. No more reckless borrowing. No more out-of-control fundraising and caving in to special interests.

Is it time for Total Recall: The Sequel?

With financial conditions so eerily similar to the crisis in 2003, Lopez wrote, “What choice did I have but to reach for the phone and dial three ringleaders from the 2003 recall of Davis?”

Congressman Darrell Issa, who financed the petition drive to end “business as usual” in Sacramento, must not have gotten the interview request I sent to his flack.

Former California Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, a self-proclaimed hero of the recall, did not return a call.

But Ted Costa, the anti-tax crusader and the man who drafted the Davis recall petition, was on the horn right away.

“We’ve got to get it going again,” I told him.

Costa seemed confused.

The recall, I said. The recall.

All the same conditions are there again, I told Costa, and there has to be another “throw the bum out” campaign.

“There probably should be,” Costa agreed, warming to the idea.

The beauty of a new campaign, I told Costa, was that he didn’t even need to rewrite the petition that was signed by more than 1.3 million angry, not-gonna-take-it-anymore Californians. Just change the name on the petition and we’re ready to roll.

Issa, it must be noted, launched the recall as a vanity project for getting himself elected governor. He famously burst into tears on camera after it became clear that Schwarzenegger had commandeered his campaign.

Lopez found the text of 2003 petition (which seems to have gone missing from the website at www.recallgraydavis.com), and suggests that it would not need to be rewritten for a Schwarzenegger recall:

The grounds for recall are as follows: Gross mismanagement of California Finances by overspending taxpayers’ money, threatening public safety by cutting funds to local governments . . . and failing in general to deal with the state’s major problems until they get to the crisis stage.

California should not have to be known as the state with poor schools, traffic jams, outrageous utility bills, and huge debts.

On January 10, 2008, Schwarzenegger rolled out his new budget proposals, which were, to put it mildly, a bit contradictory:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious policy agenda collided with fiscal reality Thursday as he rolled out a proposed budget that threatens to unravel his investment in schools, healthcare and criminal justice programs.

At the same time he is pushing a $14-billion expansion of healthcare to nearly all Californians, his budget calls for a rollback of existing medical programs for the needy.

His hope of improving schools may be dashed by what he says is a need, for the first time in years, to cut by hundreds of dollars the amount spent on each student.

And an expansion of the prison system he hoped to reform is now eclipsed by his proposal to release tens of thousands of inmates and lay off prison guards.

Schwarzenegger’s budget recommendations put into stark contrast the disparity between his vision of what the state can accomplish and what it can afford in the current economy — especially, say state finance experts, if he sticks to his promise not to raise taxes.

“I do not believe in tax increases,” the governor said in releasing his spending plan at a news conference in the capital. “I think the people of California are sending to Sacramento plenty of dollars. . . . If we cannot function with that money, there is something wrong with the system.”

Yet his vision for the state is costly — and contradictory. Proposing that the state more than double the borrowing voters approved 14 months ago for public works, the governor compared himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt with the New Deal.

Bewildered lawmakers and activists said that reference was inconsistent with his administration’s bid to close nearly one of every five state parks.

A poll released a week after Schwarzenegger announced the bad fnancial news found that he is still popular with 60 percent of Californians.

When the smoke clears after the Feb. 5 presidential primary, and the bad news starts to sink in, history may record that 60 percent approval as the high mark of his last years — or, if there’s a recall, last months — in office.