Perez hits Pebble Beach as governor releases budget

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On Friday, the day Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger releases what his own staff concedes will be a devastating budget proposal that cuts deep into state services –- and may eliminate healthcare programs that serve hundreds of thousands of Californians -- Assembly Speaker John A. Perez is scheduled to be hobnobbing with donors in the wealthy enclave of Pebble Beach with the Democratic Party’s most deep-pocketed donors.

Perez (D-Los Angeles) plays host to the Democratic Party’s biggest fundraiser of the year, with well-heeled interest groups asked to contribute $60,000 for two days of golf, four hotel rooms, two evenings of dinner and access to the most powerful lawmaker in the Assembly. The “cheapest” package for a donor costs $20,000 for the two-night affair.

Roger Salazar, a campaign spokesman for Perez, defended Perez’s attendance at the high-end fundraiser.

“The last time I checked, the budget wasn’t a one-day proposal. The last I checked, the speaker was the only one bringing the public into the budget process with his budget forums of the last few weeks,” he said, citing a series of hearings Assembly Democrats have hosted across the state.

Invitations for the Pebble Beach event were first sent to Sacramento lobbyists months ago, Salazar noted, before Perez assumed the speakership. The overlap with the governor’s budget unveiling was “clearly not intentional,” he said.

Neither Salazar nor Shannon Murphy, a spokeswoman in Perez’s Assembly office, could say Thursday if Perez would be in Sacramento on Friday to respond to the governor’s proposed budget. “We’re working out his timing right now,” Murphy said.

Schwarzenegger’s budget plan is expected to severely cut back state programs, including the possible elimination of in-home supportive services for 440,000 elderly and disabled Californians. Salazar said Perez supports the idea of public financing “as the answer to the enormous fundraising it takes to mount campaigns in California” currently. But, given the current system, “he’s going to do what it takes to be competitive to elect more Democrats” to the Legislature, he said.

Given that the speaker’s event was scheduled months ago, did Salazar think the governor picked this particular Friday to unveil the budget on purpose? “He certainly didn’t plan it on a weekend he was going to Idaho or flying off somewhere,” Salazar said.

The governor, who in years past has proposed a fundraising ban during budget season, is hosting his biggest donors – those willing to give $50,000 or more – at his Brentwood mansion Tuesday. -- Shane Goldmacher in Sacramento