LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday he was calling off budget negotiations with the State Legislature's Republican leaders because efforts to reach agreement on key issues had stalled.

Brown said he actually called off discussions to address the state's “massive deficit” on Monday after he was unable to get support to put tax extensions before voters in a special June election.

Instead, he said he plans to take a budget plan directly to the people in the weeks ahead.

In a response, Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton claimed Brown and Democrats were “obviously upset and lashing out at their inability to get buyoff from public employee unions for the reforms that the public supports and Republicans think are necessary to fix California.”

Brown said Tuesday, “The budget plan that I put forth is balanced between deep cuts and extensions of currently existing taxes and I believe it is in the best interest of California.”

However, the state constitution requires that two Republicans from the Assembly and two from the Senate must agree before the matter can be put on a ballot, support Brown's plan didn't get.

“Each and every Republican legislator I’ve spoken to believes that voters should not have this right to vote unless I agree to an ever changing list of collateral demands,” said Brown.

Brown said he supported pension reform, regulatory reform and a spending cap and offered specific and detailed proposals for each of these during our discussions.

But he added that while those reform issues were the subject of “significant progress,” he accused Republicans of making demands that would worsen the state’s problem by creating a $4 billion hole in the budget.

In a March 25 letter to Dutton he shared with the media, Brown said Dutton presented to him that day a list of 53 separate demands “many of which are new and have no relationship whatever to the budget,” including “obscure” aspects of labor law and shifting the presidential primary from February to March.

Brown wants to require multinational corporations be treated the same as individual taxpayers and not be allowed to choose their preferred tax rate.

In negotiations he said Republicans wanted to give a billion dollar tax break to corporations, which Brown said he wasn't willing to do as, ultimately, it “will come from our schoolchildren, public safety and our universities.”

Dutton said that, as far as Republicans knew, corporate tax increases weren't included in the “fine print” of Brown's campaign pledge to have all taxes go to a vote of the people.

“Republicans believe the people deserve the right to vote on issues such as reforming the unsustainable public employee pension system and placing constitutional restraints on state spending growth, in addition to taxes,” Dutton said.

Dutton said Republicans' positions on the issues are “remarkably similar” to the ones Brown championed during his campaign to return to the governor's office.

He said they, too, are committed to solving the state's long-standing budget crisis, but while they need compromise to avoid an “all-cuts” budget, Dutton added, “it involves more than the Republicans going along with the first, last and only solution of higher taxes offered by the Majority Party during this budget debate.”

Brown has pledged that, in the coming weeks, “I will focus my efforts on speaking directly to Californians and coming up with honest and real solutions to our budget crisis.”

The deadlock came just four days after Brown had signed a series of 13 budget bills to address $11.2 billion of the state's $26.6 billion budget gap.

“These are painful cuts,” Brown said at the signing ceremony.

“Certainly the next round of cuts will be much more painful and much more disruptive than the budget reductions to date,” he said, adding that he wanted people to understand, “We are in a serious bind here.”

He expressed optimism, said they were making progress and reported he was talking to Republicans who want to give people the right to vote on some of the solutions.

With the Legislature's Democrats and Republicans having reached an impasse, it leaves much undecided about the potential impacts for local communities, schools and redevelopment agencies, and just how that serious budget bind will be solved.

A final vote has not been held on Brown's proposal to abolish redevelopment agencies across the state.

Many agencies – including Lakeport's – have taken actions to shelter property and assets due to concerns that the state will take them to pour into the budget hole.

On the education front, in recent interviews with Lake County News, local educators and California Teachers Association representatives said the special June election Brown had proposed was crucial to avoiding deeper cuts for schools.

In one example, Kelseyville Unified School District representatives said having no tax extensions would necessitate $700,000 more in budget cuts over the coming two fiscal years, as Lake County News has reported.

County and city officials also have expressed concern about what the state's fiscal troubles might mean for local governments.

Brown told Dutton in his March 25 letter that he remained ready to work with Republicans on pensions, regulatory reform and a budget spending cap.

In a handwritten note near his signature line, Brown wrote, “Let's get moving!”

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews , on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .