Pérez finds an open budget process is easier said than done

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Shortly after being sworn in as Assembly Speaker, John Pérez (D-Los Angeles) vowed for more sunshine in the budget process.

‘The budget will not be written behind closed doors in ‘Big Five’ meetings,’ Pérez said, a reference to the nickname given to meetings of the four legislative leaders and the governor. Pérez delivered the line to hearty applause from the Assembly chambers. Since that time, Pérez has called this year’s budget process the most open in recent memory, reaffirming his commitment to public scrutiny of the back-room deals that so often mark budget negotiations.

But at a press conference Thursday, Pérez said he presented his caucus with some new ideas about how to close the budget deficit -- ‘possibilities that have been discussed but have not yet been agreed to,’ in Pérez’s words.

As to what those ideas are … well, they are apparently top secret for now.

‘Those are the exact kind of things you can’t discuss in public,’ he said. ‘That’s what makes them evaporate. Once you get to resolution you can talk about it but not before. It’s the greatest way that you undermine the ability to get to resolution.’

Pérez may not wrong in this assessment. Past budget deals have blown up once the press, then the public, got wind of what was being talked about behind those closed negotiation doors. But it’s contrary to what he outlined when he took the speaker’s gavel.

Pérez is not the first leader to declare a supposed end to closed-door negotiations. Senate Republican leader Dennis Hollingsworth (R-Murrieta) made similar claims when he first became leader. Yet, the secret nature of budget negotiations remains a key part of the Sacramento political process.

‘There’s $7 billion where we need to find solutions,’ Pérez said. ‘Once we get to a point where we’re comfortable with that, they and everything else that’s a product of this [budget] will go and be vetted with a public discussion.’

Perez defended the budget process so far, saying: ‘We’ve had more than 100 hearings in the Capitol and around the state…. But you don’t take a half-baked idea and bring it forward. You figure out how to fully bake it.’

That baking is currently going on behind closed doors.

--Anthony York in Sacramento