Schwarzenegger

SACRAMENTO — After a collapse in state budget negotiations late last week over funding for cities and counties, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed to revive his plan Saturday to protect their revenues.

One of the last sticking points in reaching agreement on the $103-billion state budget, the local government provisions have rocked the Capitol for several days and sent city officials across California into a frenzy of last-minute opposition.

The governor is pressuring lawmakers to support a plan under which cities and counties would accept $2.6 billion in cuts over the next two years in exchange for an amendment to the state Constitution that would prohibit such cuts in the future.

His latest push for that plan comes days after he walked away from a compromise with Democrats that would give the Legislature more flexibility in how it provides assistance to local government. The governor abandoned the compromise after local leaders rebelled against it, triggering a meltdown in the Legislature. Legislative leaders threw up their hands, and lawmakers headed home for the weekend.

“We are all here today calling on the legislators, and to tell them to go back to Sacramento and to vote for our local government agreement so that the people have their budget,” Schwarzenegger said at a rally before a few dozen police and firefighters Saturday at L.A. City Fire Station 88 in Sherman Oaks, where the governor also filmed scenes for his 2002 movie “Collateral Damage.”

“We were at the home stretch, we were very close to have a deal and a budget, but suddenly the legislators shut down and left Sacramento and went back home.”

The governor demanded an immediate floor vote on the deal he and local leaders had worked out.

Senate President John Burton (D-San Francisco) downplayed Schwarzenegger’s appearances, saying the governor hammering lawmakers at public rallies “doesn’t faze me.”

“Bring it on if you want,” Burton said. “We’ll just let the cards read for themselves. I believe the negotiations with the Legislature and the governor can be done pretty quickly.” He said he had been speaking with the governor and his chief of staff by telephone and believed a budget deal could be reached soon.

The deal the city and county leaders are pushing is simple. It begins with them accepting $1.3 billion in cuts for each of the next two years.

In return, the governor and lawmakers would support a constitutional amendment that would protect their share of the state budget from ever again being cut.

Democrats say that plan is full of problems: It would make it nearly impossible for lawmakers to borrow from cities and counties during a fiscal crisis; it would lock into the Constitution a system that forces local governments to become overly dependent on sales tax, leading too many to become overly reliant on “big box” retail stores, leading to sprawl; and it would give cities and counties priority in the state budget over education, social services and most every government program.

“It gives local government more protection than schools,” Burton said.

Burton called on the local leaders to return to the negotiating table.

He cautioned them not to take their chances on an initiative they have on the November ballot that would prohibit the state from taking any money away from cities and counties ever again.

“The polls show it is going in the dumpster,” Burton said. “If they want to come to the table, good. If they don’t, let them take their chances.”

Standing alongside the governor in Los Angeles on Saturday, however, several big-city mayors said they saw no reason to give in to any Democratic demands.

“We had a deal,” said Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn. “We want that deal to go through.”

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown said local governments were not the Legislature’s “personal piggy bank.”

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom sat onstage at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Friday and described one of the primary ways he is responding as the Trump administration shifts federal climate priorities.

“I’m showing up,” he said.

In recent months, that has meant trips to Brazil, Switzerland and now Germany, where he has repeatedly positioned California as a global climate partner. The travel has also revived a recurring question from critics and watchdog groups: Who pays for those trips?

In many cases, the costs are not borne by taxpayers. The governor’s office said his international travel is paid for by the California State Protocol Foundation, a nonprofit that is funded primarily by corporate donations and run by a board Newsom appoints.

For decades, California governors have relied on nonprofits to pick up the tab for official travel, diplomatic events and other costs that would otherwise be paid with taxpayer funds.

“The Foundation’s mission is to lessen the burden on California taxpayers by reimbursing appropriate expenses associated with advancing the state’s economic and diplomatic interests,” said Jason Elliott, a former high-ranking advisor to Newsom, who the governor added to the foundation’s board.

While the arrangement helps the state’s pocketbook, critics say it is another avenue for corporate interests to gain influence.

“The problem with the protocol foundation and others like it is that donors to these foundations receive access to the politicians whose travel they fund,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

When did nonprofits start paying for gubernatorial travel?

The protocol foundation was created as a tax-exempt charity during Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration in 2004.

Similar nonprofits have existed since Gov. George Deukmejian created one in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, Gov. Gray Davis dramatically increased the use of nonprofits to cover travel, housing and political events.

When Schwarzenegger left office, his supporters turned the protocol foundation over to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s backers, who in turn handed it over to Newsom’s camp. The foundation describes its mission in federal tax filings as “relieving the State of California of its obligations to fund certain expenditures of the Governor’s Office.”

Newsom appoints members to the foundation board, which then is responsible for determining what expenses to cover in the governor’s office. In its most recent tax filing covering 2024, the foundation lists its board chair as Steve Kawa, who served as Newsom’s chief of staff when he was mayor of San Francisco. The foundation’s secretary in those filings is Jim DeBoo, who was Newsom’s chief of staff in the governor’s office until 2022.

The foundation reported total revenue of $1.3 million in 2024 and, after expenses, had a balance of less than $8,000.

What is the foundation paying for?

Publicly available records are vague, but annual financial disclosure forms show the foundation paid more than $13,000 for the governor’s 2024 trip to Italy, where he delivered a speech on climate change at the Vatican.

That same year, the foundation paid nearly $4,000 for his trip to Mexico City to attend the inauguration of Mexico’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum. The cost of both trips included flights, hotel and meals for his “official travel,” according to the disclosure records, which are filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission and known as Form 700s.

Newsom has reported receiving $72,000 in travel, staff picnics and holiday events from the protocol foundation since he took office in 2019, according to the disclosures.

The foundation paid $15,200 for the governor’s 2023 trip to China, where he visited five cities in seven days during an agenda packed with meetings, sightseeing and celebrations, including a private tour of the Forbidden City.

In 2020, the foundation paid $8,800 for Newsom to travel to Miami for Super Bowl LIV — where he said he was representing the state as the San Francisco 49ers faced the Kansas City Chiefs.

The governor’s office said it did not yet have the amount picked up by the foundation for Newsom’s travel to Brazil to attend the United Nations climate summit known as COP30 or to Switzerland for the World Economic Summit.

Who are the donors behind the foundation?

In some cases, the well-heeled funders behind the foundation’s cash flow are easy to identify on state websites.

Donations to the foundation that are solicited directly or indirectly by Newsom are recorded with the Fair Political Practices Commission as behested payments. A behested payment occurs when an elected official solicits or suggests that a person or organization give to another person or organization for a legislative, governmental or charitable purpose.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation donated $300,000 in a 2023 behested payment earmarked for the California delegation traveling to China for the meetings on climate change. UC Berkeley gave $220,000 for the governor’s office’s trip to the Vatican in 2024.

Most donations simply indicate that they are directed for “general operating support” of the foundation. That includes two donations from the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company Zoox Inc. cumulatively worth $80,000.

Two charities set up to pay for Newsom’s inaugurations in 2019 and 2023 moved more than $5 million to the protocol foundation since 2019. The financial backers behind those inaugural charities include powerful unions, corporations, tribal casino interests, trade associations and healthcare giants — organizations with significant financial stakes in state policy decisions.

Past spending by the foundation has been criticized

During Schwarzenegger’s administration, his office avoided fully disclosing $1.7 million in travel costs paid for by the foundation, instead relying on vague internal memos and, in some cases, oral accounting, according to a 2007 Los Angeles Times investigation.

Schwarzenegger’s expenses picked up by the foundation included leased Gulfstream jets costing up to $10,000 per hour and suites going for thousands of dollars a night. The Times’ investigation found among the costs was $353,000 for a single round trip to China on a private jet in 2005.

The foundation also paid for Schwarzenegger’s travels to Japan, Europe, Canada and Mexico.

At the time, Schwarzenegger’s representatives told The Times the governor did not have to report the travel costs on his annual disclosure forms because the payments for the jets and suites were gifts to his office, not to him.

Newsom’s office said the governor travels commercially, not on private jets.

IN RECENT WEEKS, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators have talked about giving California a well-deserved bigger say in the presidential campaign by moving up the state’s primary. However, if Democrats really want to put the party in the strongest possible position to succeed in presidential elections, let’s completely rethink the current primary system and replace it with a nominating process designed to pick the candidate best able to win.

In 2004, the primary season was frontloaded around a few early, relatively small and not especially diverse states in order to identify as quickly as possible the “most electable” candidate and to conserve money for the general election. Because these were small states that are historically won one voter and one constituency group at a time, candidates were rewarded for their retail campaign skills: one-on-one politics, constituency group building and a good biography. Unfortunately, these skills are about as relevant to a 21st century national presidential campaign as horseback riding is relevant to driving a car.

Modern presidential campaigns are tests of character; they’re a hunt for candidates who have broad appeal (as opposed to a biography attractive to only a limited range of voters). They’re about identifying candidates with the ability to articulate a message that speaks to all Americans, rather than those who rely on the typical 12-point plans constructed for one constituency group or another. Modern presidential races are about the ability to connect with voters over the TV in their living rooms — not about a candidate’s charm when he meets with them in person in their own living rooms. And they’re about the capacity to assemble and run a far-flung organization capable of raising well in excess of $100 million in just a few years.

With three reforms, the Democrats can put in place a nominating system that will produce the strongest and, yes, most electable candidate.

First, the Democratic primary schedule should open with a group of states that, when taken together, represents the mosaic that is America. Along with a Midwestern Iowa and a Northeastern New Hampshire, let’s have a state from the Southwest, South and West all voting on the same day.

A multi-state campaign taking place on one day and involving a diverse set of states will begin the process of identifying the candidate who can put together the winning qualities of a national campaign.

Second, the primary season needs to be spread over a longer time period — not just in theory but in practice as well, so candidates are truly tested. Beginning in early February and going until May, Democrats should schedule a series of 10 primaries, with each involving five geographically diverse states voting every two weeks. The diverse and multi-state nature of the races would make it far more likely that the campaign would be competitive for a longer period. (Under the current system, the 2008 primary could effectively be over after four early states vote in a span of a few weeks, as it was in 2004. The compressed time period and winner-take-all nature of the existing system means that whoever does well in these first states, especially the first two, is in all likelihood the presumptive nominee.)

This sort of diverse process over an extended time period worked in 1992 — the only time in the last 25 years that the Democrats nominated a candidate, Bill Clinton, who went on to be sworn in as president. That year, because Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin was running in the Iowa caucuses and because New Hampshire voters chose former Sen. Paul Tsongas of neighboring Massachusetts, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire played their historically determinative roles. In fact, the 1992 election was the first time in history that a candidate became president who did not win the New Hampshire primary. Instead, Democrats had to compete vigorously over the course of several months in such places as South Dakota, and then in Georgia (where Clinton got his first win), Maryland, Colorado, South Carolina, Arizona, Super Tuesday, and then on to Connecticut, New York and eventually California, where Clinton wrapped up the nomination in early June.

If Democrats had been using the 2004 primary system in 1992, their nominee could well have been Tsongas. The longer, diversified schedule, however, allowed Clinton to prove himself to voters, exposed the candidates’ relative strengths and weaknesses and allowed the Democrats to stay on the offensive and define the terms of the general election. Democrats ended up with a candidate who actually won a number of states in the South and all the states in the upper Midwest — and who had the message, the battle-hardened ability and the proven campaign operation needed to beat the Republicans.

The third reform, in order to encourage more voter participation and loosen the grip of the Washington establishment on the Democratic Party’s nomination process, is a three-part proposal: Eliminate the “super delegate” system. Super delegates are a significant pool of at-large, free-agent delegates representing the Democratic apparatus (including both party and elected officials) in the nominating process. In addition, the party should establish a system that more closely resembles the system that states such as Maine and Nebraska use in the general election, in which they divide nominating delegates by congressional districts, with votes for each district and additional points for whichever candidate wins the majority of the state’s total vote. Finally, as in New Hampshire, independents should be allowed to vote in Democratic primaries.

These changes would force candidates to compete for an ideologically broader range of voters throughout all regions of a state, including in urban, suburban, exurban and rural districts.

Even a cursory glance at a red-and-blue color-coded map that divides the country’s counties up shows that Democrats need to compete in more than just the major cities and coastal regions. Not only will this be of enormous help to producing a candidate who can compete nationally — it will help the party’s candidates lower down on the ballot, where Democrats face challenges in traditional swing communities.

The winning coalition for Democrats will in all likelihood not be the old Democratic coalition of labor, minorities, women and coastal progressives. As the 2006 midterms demonstrated, for the Democratic Party to regain a permanent majority status, our candidates must win by talking to all Americans.