Dan Walters | Sacramento Bee | Mar. 18, 2010
The Legislature's Democratic leadership has put into words, in the form of a constitutional amendment, its supposed cure for the Capitol's chronic gridlock on the state budget, having adapted it from proposals by California Forward, a bipartisan political reform group.
The measure, ACA 4, faces tough sledding in the Legislature because its most controversial provision, reducing the legislative vote requirement for a budget bill from two-thirds to a simple majority, would eliminate Republican leverage. The constitutional amendment itself would require a two-thirds vote to place it before voters and GOP leaders vowed to kill it when Democratic leaders unveiled it in conceptual form last week.