By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

Arnold Schwarzenegger came into the governorship six years ago on a promise to end “crazy deficit spending” and bring order to the state’s tangled finances. But as he begins his last year in office, the harsh reality is that so far he’s utterly failed to cure California’s fiscal ills.

The qualities that had fueled Schwarzenegger’s highly successful careers as a bodybuilding competitor and movie star – primarily his boundless self-confidence – did not translate well in the confines of the Capitol. His first months as governor were marked by contradictory words and actions that undermined what should have been a single-minded concentration on fixing state finances.

How does one reconcile, for example, his very first act as governor, reducing taxes on automobiles by billions of dollars, with his plea to voters, soon afterward, to borrow $15 billion to rescue the state from imminent insolvency – while simultaneously touting a supposed spending limit that, as everyone in the Capitol knew, was worthless?

Schwarzenegger squandered the momentum that his election and the recall of his hapless predecessor, Gray Davis, had generated. It signaled to many that despite all of his tough talk about balancing the state budget, he didn’t really want to make the unpopular decisions that the task required.

Schwarzenegger had a very brief window of opportunity to set a new tone of fiscal responsibility, and he blew it. He not only didn’t balance the budget when the economy was soaring – being much more willing to spend rather than save – but he has often used cynical bookkeeping gimmicks and phantom revenue to close deficits, hoping against hope that a new economic surge would solve his problem painlessly.

With the state in the grip of severe recession, its “structural deficit” has widened. As he begins his last year as governor, Schwarzenegger faces a budget crisis every bit as severe as the one he inherited from Davis, and arguably worse.

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