California is facing a crisis. Our state's broken governance system has left us with a $20 billion debt and facing down the possibility of bankruptcy. Repairing California requires real action and substantive reform, like calling for a state Constitutional Convention.
This is truly a grassroots, citizen-led movement to fix our state by calling for the first Constitutional Convention in California since 1878. After years of leaving our state beholden to special interest groups and the dysfunctional initiative process, California's Constitution has become incapable of serving the people of our state.
In order to spread our campaign's message and generate support for this people's movement, we will be holding our first Leadership Forum this Wednesday.
Date: February 10
Time: 6:30pm to 8:30 pm
Location: Santa Clara County Convention Center, 5001 Great American Parkway, Santa Clara in Meeting Room #209.
Members of the Convention Movement will be on hand to speak about the process of calling a state Constitutional Convention as well as address some of the major issues that have contributed to California's decline. This is a great opportunity to come and learn more about this truly historic campaign.
We are all undoubtedly aware that California needs help to become great again. And as Californians, we want to do whatever we can to accomplish this. Our movement will take a big step on Wednesday evening and we hope to see you there.
California needs a knight in shining armor to deliver it from the forces of budget shortfalls, program cuts, and sub-15% legislative approval ratings.
At first, I thought our hope was Gavin Newsom, but his departure from the Governor's race leaves a handful of candidates on both sides that seem inherently opposed to doing the one thing that could save this state: raising revenue.
So, who is going to carry the baton? Where is our saving grace, and when will he/she hurry their butt up and save us from sinking further and further into debt and depression?
One person who could posthumanly save the State of California is Saul Alinsky. Deemed by many as the "father of community organizing", Alinsky helped organize the Back of the Yards area of Chicago introduced to the national stage by Sinclair's "The Jungle".
Alinsky passed away in 1972 (in Carmel-By-The-Sea), but his revolutionary tactics for mobilizing the masses have time and time again generated the true catalyst for change: Friction. Given the current economic situation in this state, Lord knows we need something.
On November 19th, 52 UC Davis students were arrested after peacefully protesting the new 32% fee increases established by the UC Regents. As a second year undergraduate, I was hopeful that students were beginning to see the bigger picture: California is broken.
Students, so far, have been forcing most of the blame on the UC Regents. While it is true that the 20 Regents who voted for the increase certainly deserve a heaving portion of the blame for borrowing tens of millions (from a non-CA bank, NY Merrill Trust) while forcing students into a cycle of debt in order to protect UC's eerily superb bond rating, the only way for students to move towards enacting change is to recognize that UC's woes are symptomatic of the larger disease that has infected the entire state.
The UC student, to widen the umbrella for a movement that might have the capability of rallying support for reform, should understand that he or she risks turning people off by angling attacks towards the Regents and the Regents only. It is important to recognize that while it is a travesty that UC is becoming an unaffordable option for many California families, it is nearsighted to think that UC fees are anything more than a slice of the pie that is California's broken political system. The state workers that have been furloughed, the elderly Californians that are losing their access to Medicare, the thousands of previously middle-class Californians that have had their homes foreclosed, and the over 12% of California that is unemployed might tell students that UC is not the only government program that is underfunded, mismanaged, and increasingly unavailable to the people who need it.
After a year of public discussion and behind-closed-doors drafting, the Bay Area Council has filed their two initiatives for the November 2010 ballot to allow Californians to call a Constitutional Convention.
The first and fairly noncontroversial initiative would change the existing constitution to allow voters to themselves call a convention. Currently only the legislature can do so.
The second initiative is the biggie, the one that actually convenes the convention and lays out how it operates, including how delegates would be picked and what the scope would be.
The delegate selection process would be as follows: 3 delegates randomly selected from each AD (total of 240) and delegates selected by county Boards of Supervisors, one delegate per every 175,000 in a given county, with cities of over 1 million (currently LA and SD, maybe San Jose) get to pick some of their county's delegates. Federally-recognized Indian tribes get to send a total of 4 delegates (they decide themselves who the 4 will be). This is interesting, since tribes' primary relationship with with the federal government, and states are very strictly limited from regulating tribal affairs or lands. Still, better to have them in the process than outside it, especially since they were banned from the 1849 and 1879 conventions.
Significantly, all delegates must be citizens. Permanent residents are not eligible to participate. There are a series of other restrictions designed to keep political insiders out of the convention - rules that exclude yours truly (since I serve on a party central committee), but those are much less problematic than the exclusion of California's considerable non-citizen population.
Preliminary analysis offered to me by Gus Ayer over email, which I hope he'll share in the comments, indicates that this structure would be highly likely to produce a delegate body that is right of center. California's large-population counties tend to be in Southern California and have Boards of Supervisors dominated by Republicans.
The convention's scope is also interesting, and skewed toward the right. Have a look at the language on "Government Effectiveness," included as one of four items the Convention MUST consider (along with "Elections and Reduction of Special Interest Influence," "Spending and Budgeting" and "Governance"):
Government Effectiveness, including a method for periodically reviewing each State agency, department, board and commission to determine whether it is performing its functions to meet the needs of the people of the State and whether it should have its enabling legislation modified, be merged into another new or existing entity, or cease to exist.
The convention it would also be barred from altering existing constitutional language regarding taxes (including but not limited to Prop 13) if there's any chance that the alteration "changes the fundamental nature of" the tax or might cause the tax to rise. In his response to my question during last week's live interview on Calitics, Gavin Newsom said Prop 13 should be part of a Con-Con.
The initiative also proposes to limit the scope of the convention in this way:
the convention may not include new language, or alter existing language, directly affecting marriage or abortion rights, gambling or casinos of any type, affirmative action, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, immigration rights, or the death penalty.
I don't know if they simply forgot to include "freedom of speech" or the state's Equal Rights Amendment or any number of other elements that make our state's Bill of Rights far, far stronger than the federal bill of rights, or if they deliberately want that to be altered. (Businesses have never been very happy with the Pruneyard decision, which used the state's freedom of speech constitutional language to extend many speech rights onto private property, specifically shopping centers.)
Needless to say, this is not how I would have written a Con-Con initiative.
UPDATE by Robert:Joe Mathews offers his take on the initiatives, noting that the FPPC will be in charge of the Convention, picking the staff and training the delegates. He also points out that the "clerk" of the convention will be an extremely important role, could be anybody, and can only be fired by a 2/3rds vote of the Convention.
The Bay Area Council, a business coalition from the...um...Bay Area, has announced that they will drop $2 million into the Repair California efforts that they have been pushing for the last few years. Their efforts to get a constitutional convention may, or may not, result in a ballot measure effort for the November 2010 election. Maybe.
Repair California, a coalition preparing two Constitutional Convention initiatives for the November 2010 ballot, will receive $2 million from its chief sponsor, the Bay Area Council.
Steven Hill, a coalition member and director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation, made the announcement a few minutes ago at a constitutional reform convention in Sacramento. It represents about half of what the group estimates it will need to run a successful initiative campaign.
Hill also outlined some of of the details of the planned initiatives, which he said will be filed with the state in the next 10 days.
The first initiative authorizes the voters to call a Constitutional Convention, an act restricted under current law to the Legislature. The second measure convenes a convention limited to the review of governance issues. Its recommended reforms would come back to voters in subsequent elections. (CoCo Times)
But the real question is how the delegates are allocated. And as of right now, it appears that they will be allocated at the County Supervisor level. Every county gets one, and another for each 250K of population, with some provisions made for the 1mil+ cities. If it's a winner take all thing, where a 3-2 Republican lean appoint all of the delegates, we're looking at a heavily Republican convention. Even if there is some proportionate representation in the bigger counties, it's hard to see how it gets anywhere near the big Democratic advantage we see in the Legislature.
Obviously this is unacceptable. On one level, how could progressives support something with such a big thumb on the scale for conservatives. On the other, law-side, how does the BAC plan on getting around the legal precedent striking down representation based upon counties. It violates the one man-one vote principle.
There is still time to change the proposed language, but if this is the plan, I for one will not be supporting it.
I've shortened up the questions for this poll in the table here, and some may have gotten a little confusing, but most is fairly self-explanatory.
The state wants some sort of big change, it just doesn't really know how it wants, what it wants, or why it wants it. But, it just wants to start all over again.
Except keeping Prop 13 apparently. The split roll and the majority vote for revenue faired very poorly, but what can you expect? The question was basically, would you like consensus to raise taxes. Well, sure, and I like apple pie too. But when one party refuses logic, what then?
The problem with a poll like this is that these concepts are very loose in voters minds. They are almost completely defined by the question that is asked by the pollster. For an example of that, on the Parsky Commission Flat tax question, it was asked two different ways, and the answers changed by nearly ten points.
Finally, "waste and fraud delusion" in the chart refers to a question that asks respondents about waste and fraud. This makes me both sad and increases the chances that my head will explode by a factor of 10.
By a 57% to 37% margin voters believe the state can provide about the same level of services by simply eliminating waste and inefficiencies, even if its budget had to be cut by billions of dollars.
Not only is this so astronomically off the mark as to be laughable, it shows that the Republicans have destroyed us at messaging. They have made "public employee" into a synonym for all that is evil and wasteful. Despite the fact that our state employees work in some very demanding positions, the conservative movement has repeated over and over again how the government is just stealing. And now the state believes it.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, California believes that it is "waste" that is bankrupting the state. Despite the fact that the Republicans couldn't come up with anything near even a billion dollars of identifiable waste. Despite the fact that the Republican budget slashed services, cut to the very core of what Californians have requested, nay demanded, since the days of Pat Brown.
Californians want their yummy chocolate cake, but they also want to eat the tasty carrot cake on the shelf. The key is that we can't give up, and give in to this. We must continue to fight for changes that will make the state productive once again.
But I refer back to the problem with a poll like this: the questions define the answers. The poll on this last question sounds like something you'd hear on Fox and Friends:
The state government has been facing large budget deficits over the past several years. Some people believe that by simply eliminating waste and inefficiencies our state government can provide roughly the same level of services that it currently does, even if its budget has to be cut by 20-25 billion dollars. Do you agree strongly, agree somewhat, disagree somewhat or disagree strongly with this view?
Really? Some people believe? Care to name one of them that doesn't have a financial or electoral stake in that fact gaining traction? And even given that standard, you would be hard pressed to find anybody that really pays attention to the state government who thinks you can cut $20 billion from a budget that is now well below $100 billion and expect no service cuts. I would love to chit-chat with that person.
In the end, polling for these kinds of nebulous question goes only so far, no matter how good the pollster. This is the problem with all of this direct democracy, it allows one person or another to put their finger on the scale, whether in the form of the AG's description or the pollster's question.
We elect representatives to think about these issues for us, to come up with good answers. Yet we have consistenly knee-capped them over the last 30 years. Californians want big change, they just don't want to change.
Incidentally, if you'd like to see some different questions get asked, you could look to George Lakoff. Some progressive activists are seeking money to fund a poll. They've raised $10,000 and are looking for another $25,000. You can help by giving on ActBlue.
UPDATE by Robert: This morning Brian beat me to the Field Poll post. What I was going to say is: It's easy for Californians to say they want change, just as it turned out be fairly easy for the American people to say they wanted change by electing Obama last fall. As we're seeing in Washington D.C., actually implementing change is the hard part. Are people - and legislators - really willing to give up long-held assumptions, beliefs, and ways of doing business, without which change cannot happen?
We're witnessing the same thing here in California. Voters want change, but they are wary of the details, and are not yet abandoning old ideologies. That's not to say they'll refuse to do so - instead, in the absence of a clearly articulated and defined alternative vision for California, polls show that voters are not automatically going to give up on the 1978 model of California governance, even though its failure is obvious to all.
I agree with Brian that we've been getting "destroyed" at messaging. Even now, progressive and Democratic organizations still do not want to accept the importance of doing the basic work of creating and actively, consistently, and coherently pushing progressive frames. The consultantocracy still believes in playing for the near-term narrow victory, and has no confidence in their ability to produce fundamental changes in voter thought or voter behavior.
These poll numbers do show that Californians want change. And they are a starting point for how we can produce it. The numbers on Prop 13 are a baseline, not a sign that we should stay away from the topic. And the numbers on the Parsky Commission proposals show that voters do want progressive solutions. It's time we offered them.
(Attorney General Brown formally filed to open an exploratory committee for Governor today.)
With the Rasmussen poll numbers filtering through the traditional media, the idea of Jerry Brown being the favorite at this moment to return to the Governor's mansion is taking hold outside of California. Talking Points Memo has a piece marveling at how strange it is to see the "colorful" Brown back in this position, recalling the time-worn stories about Linda Ronstadt and "Governor Moonbeam," although they do acknowledge that "this all contributed to a somewhat inaccurate caricature of him as a left-winger." Indeed, the TPM profile notes that Brown was a fiscal conservative in office and ran on the flat tax in 1992. Clearly, the author was informed by Joe Mathews' cover story in this month's American Prospect, which delves further into Brown's un-campaign for Governor and the puzzling question of what in the heck he's planning to do once he gets there:
But a little talk about the big picture is in order. Outside Brown's news conferences, California is coming undone. This summer, unemployment reached 11.9 percent. Tens of billions of dollars have been cut from the budget in the past year. Thousands of teachers have been laid off. State offices are now closed three Fridays a month. University tuition has been hiked. Thousands of elderly and disabled people are losing their state-provided health insurance.
The crisis is so profound that it may present an opportunity for California to fix its badly broken government. Coalitions on the left and in the center (the right is sitting on the sidelines, enjoying the Armageddon) are drafting plans to change the way the state is governed. They hope to get several measures on the 2010 ballot that would reshape the state budget, call a state constitutional convention, and perhaps unwind much of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that severely limited the government's ability to raise taxes -- a major contributing factor to the budget hole California finds itself in today.
If any candidate should be talking about this, it's Jerry Brown. After all, Prop. 13 passed during his governorship. But Brown has yet to engage the would-be reformers. In the rare moments when he's asked how the state might be fixed, he talks vaguely of the need to forge compromise and invokes older, better times in California, when he and his father, former Gov. Pat Brown, were in power. "We can talk about 'restoring the dream,'" he told a union conference in Palo Alto during an explicitly political appearance this summer. "Well, I was around when the dream was here."
This is a dodge -- not only of the present questions about what he might do as governor but also of lasting concerns about Brown's own role in diminishing the California dream. Pat Brown was a great builder of the highways and waterways and schools that made the state prosperous, but his son Jerry announced "an era of limits." Since that declaration 33 years ago, the state's population has grown from 22 million to more than 38 million. The state government has not kept up. If Brown has specific ideas on what to do about all of this, he is keeping them to himself.
Brown clearly has a blueprint for winning the election - say as little as humanly possible about the problems that grip the state, and hope that tangerine dreams of the halcyon 70s push him to victory. You cannot blame him - it's a winning formula. With a pathetically thin state political media, it's fairly difficult to run on any issues to begin with, at least ones beyond the bumper-sticker variety. Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected by saying pretty much nothing that wouldn't fit as a movie slogan, and a celebrity-obsessed media let him get away with it. So I don't begrudge Brown the lack of specifics. That's the way the game has been played in recent years.
Indeed, I don't worry about what we don't know about Brown, but what we do know.
Progressives, both then and now, argue that Brown's brand of anti-government liberalism fueled the Prop. 13 fire. If government isn't all that important, what does it matter if you cut taxes? Brown had frozen highway construction, criticized funding for adult education and food stamps, and slashed social services. "I am going to starve the schools financially until I get some educational reforms," he said in one encounter with reporters.
What reforms, governor?
"I don't know yet." [...]
Brown, in the midst of running for re-election, called himself a "born-again tax cutter" and immediately reinvented himself as Prop. 13's champion. (He maintains now that he had to support 13 after its victory because of his oath to defend the state constitution.) Brown went so far as to befriend the legislation's co-sponsor, the anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis. "It seemed like he went over to Jarvis' house frequently," says Joel Fox, who would later serve as an aide to Jarvis. "Mrs. Jarvis would tell stories about serving lunch to the governor with Howard in his pajamas. Howard voted for him for re-election because Jerry convinced him he would implement Prop. 13 in the right spirit."
As it happens, the only thing worse than Prop. 13 itself was its implementation. Brown and the legislature bailed out cities and counties that lost revenues under the law -- and thus established the dysfunctional system of budgeting that plagues California to this day. Tax and spending decisions once made by city councils and school boards were centralized in Sacramento. The state Capitol became a giant piggy bank, with interests on the right and left using lobbying muscle -- and the initiative process -- to carve out special protections for their funds, leaving less for broad public investments. At the rare moments when Democrats tried to make such investments, Prop. 13's two-thirds requirement for taxes allowed Republicans, even when they were in the minority, to block them.
Indeed, the Jerry Brown of recentpubliccomments shows no sign of understanding the present state of the state. He has supported the current Governor in various accounting tricks and tough-on-crime stances that have blown a hole in the deficit. He has stated an unwillingness to take a leadership position on any even remotely controversial issue. He hasn't strayed from that "born-again tax-cutter" mantra. As our own Robert Cruickshank says in this very good article:
"The problem with Brown is that I'm not convinced he's moved past 1978," says Robert Cruickshank, who works for the progressive 700,000-member network Courage Campaign and is a frequent contributor to the blog Calitics. "The lesson he drew from that is that he has to adapt to a more conservative reality. ... I'm concerned that it's not going to be the kind of governorship where you see significant changes in the way California operates."
If this is the Jerry Brown we can expect to "lead" in 2010, I know that progressives will have far better outlets for their advocacy, be it the Lakoff Initiative or the Constitutional convention. As I've said many times, you could elect Noam Chomsky governor and he would still be constrained by the same structural factors that resist true democracy and responsible governance. And Jerry Brown is most certainly no Noam Chomsky.
We complain a lot about the national media not really understanding what's going on in California. Other than an occasional column by Paul Krugman, the national coverage of the California crisis has been almost universally off target. It's been either "post-partisan" drivel about Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gavin Newsom or some other governor past, present, or future, or it has been so blatantly wrong on the issues facing the state as to be laughable. For a good example of both, you can see the New York Times article from July.
But there is no reason it has to be that way, a journalist could take a few hours, do some research, and figure out a pretty good idea of what's going on here. While Hendrik Hertzberg misses some of the nuance of the issues facing our Golden State, he does grasp the big pitcture in the August 24 issue of the New Yorker.
California, it turns out, is ungovernable. Its public schools, once the nation's best, are now among the worst. Its transportation and water systems are deteriorating. Its prisons are so overcrowded that it has to turn tens of thousands of felons loose. And its legislature has spent most of the year in a farcical effort to pass the annual budget, leaving little or no time for other matters, such as-well, schools, transportation, water, and prisons. This is "normal": the same thing has happened in eighteen of the past twenty-two years. But the addition of economic disaster to legislative paralysis may have brought California to a tipping point.
... The nadir, some would say, came in 1978, when Proposition 13 essentially capped property taxes and made California the only state that requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature both to adopt a budget and to raise a tax. The decline in public services was one result. Another has been a distortion of the state's politics. Conservative Republican legislators have little incentive to compromise or even to broaden their appeal; to prevail on most of what is important to them, all they need is one-third plus one. (New Yorker 8/24/09)
He doesn't sugar coat it, or try to provide some sort of bipartisan spin on what's really happening. We have a cult that is masquerading as a political party that is dead set on pushing social services and all but the richest among us off the cliff. And for whatever criticisms you can levy at him, you have to give Hertzberg credit for recognizing the issue.
The article goes on to deal with the now prominent question of a Constitutional Convention. He's a fan. Big-time.
The genius of Repair California's approach is twofold. First, it steers clear of "social issues": no gay marriage, no abortion, no affirmative action. Second, the delegates would be chosen randomly from the adult population. (Appointed delegates, Repair California reasons, would be beholden to whoever appointed them; and if the delegates were elected, the elections would inevitably be low-turnout affairs dominated by money and the organized clout of special interests.) The convention itself would be an exercise in what is called "deliberative democracy." The delegates would spend months studying the issues, consulting experts, debating among themselves, and forging a consensus. The result would be put to a vote of the people, yes or no, in November of 2012.
To have faith in such a process requires a faith in the good sense and sincerity of ordinary people-a faith that just about everybody professes. The beauty part is that no one can know what the delegates would come up with-which is why the idea has won such broad support. ... If California has the courage and imagination to become a true laboratory of democracy, the experiment will be something to see.
You can't blame Hertzberg for his optimism, the whole thing does sound very exciting. And, truth be told, it is very exciting. Of course, the problem here is that when the lab is your home, it is easy to get cold feet about the whole thing. But, when you talk about fundamentally changing California's governance, you really can't help but be excited. Think of all the cool directions you could go - a unicameral legislature, some sort of proportionate representation, heck, we could even look at a parlimentary system. The world is our oyster in that we could pick and choose good aspects of governments from around the world.
But there is a down side, namely that we could very well end up with something crazy in the Constitution. As Jean Ross pointed out during the Netroots Nation panel, the last time we had a Constitutional Convention we ended up with the Chinese Exclusion Laws.
The suggestion so far is to create a random selection in order to decide the delegates. It is an intriguing suggestion, as perhaps the people would come without the preconceived biases of current legislators. We would avoid the campaign finance issues and all the issues of special interest money. But biases can be built back up quickly enough, and getting a completely clean slate would be difficult if not impossible. Depending on the process, we could easily end up with a similar problem to that which we have now: a minority holding up the whole system.
I suppose that after writing about California politics, the cynicism and pessimism can't help but be strong. But that cynicism is there for a reason. The Republican Party in California has blossomed into a full-on Zombie Death Cult, and that has spread from some of the grassroots base of the party to a general mistrust of the system. We are now in a period of vast mistrust of the government, and to expect citizens to simply re-empower a functional government is to be almost foolishly optimistic.
That all being said, the process does slightly work in the favor of experimentation. If we do get a constitutional convention called, we can play with the house's money to an extent. If we get something solid out of the convention, great we have a working system. If we don't get anything, well, all we've wasted is a bit of time and some money to pull the convention together. And if we get a document that isn't an improvement, well, it has to be put up for a vote once again. While it may seem odd for organizers and supporters of the convention movement to then oppose its output, the option of defeating the thing is still there.
Is the whole thing risky? Of course. But it just might be worth doing. After all, it's not like the status quo is really anything worth holding on to.
In any conversation about or process for reforming our state's government, it's all too easy to get hasty and become hung up on policy outcomes that one wants or even that the state needs. One may even feel the urge to oppose the movement to convene a constitutional convention out of trepidation about one's priorities possibly being neglected or harmed. But, as David pointed out:
Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council has said that everything within government should be on the table, which worries some that a Pandora's box will be open, an opportunity to mess with fundamental rights. First of all, that's the case right now, as last November proved.
Beyond that, there's a process for doing a constitution "right," if we can popularize the main principle behind it and cement it in any forthcoming convention charter. The process can assuage the fears of those who stand to lose something that they have in the current Constitution, while still ensuring we can address those issues under the new constitution in a manner representative of the citizens' views. That is:
Confine the scope of any new constitution to matters of rights, of structure and mechanics of government, and of powers both granted and limited.
Set apart everything in the existing Constitution that falls outside this scope, everything that pertains to policy rather than what is foundationally structural, and include in the ratification of the new constitution enactment of all of that policy as regular law.
That way we can focus on the structure-of-government issues, majority rule, provisions to thwart tyranny of the majority where merited, and so forth at the constitutional convention. Then we can address policy matters such as taxes, budgetary allocation, administration policies, and the like in the regular legislative process, as it should be under a republican form of government, all the while minimizing the disruption of governance as we citizens reassert our rightful power. Specifically, don't repeal Proposition 13 property tax policy, Proposition 98 education funding policy, et cetera at the convention — keep them as ordinary law, and in so doing, make them subject to majority rule in the regular legislative process.
This approach presupposes the extinction of the two-thirds rule as well as reform of the initiative and referendum processes, though those matters will be topics the convention must address in any case. This approach may thwart anti-democratic blank slate-ism that shock doctrinarian opportunists could seize upon.
People seemed to really engage with this post about a Constitutional convention, so I wanted to follow up with some of my thoughts for what a convention could tackle and what it could look like. As it happens I attended a town hall meeting about a proposed ConCon a couple weeks ago in Santa Monica, featuring Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies, Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council, Steven Hill and Mark Paul of the New America Foundation, Asm. Julia Brownley (AD-41), Santa Monica Mayor Pam O'Connor and LA City Councilman Bill Rosendahl.
At the root, a Constitutional convention must concern itself with restoring confidence in government. Right now, that's at an all-time low, especially after budget agreements hashed out in secret that defy the will of the people and an erosion in the public trust in lawmakers to do the right thing in Sacramento. Government is not responsive, in fact in many cases it cannot Constitutionally be responsive to the popular will. The institutions have become paralyzed and captive to special interest lobbying. We have ten lobbyists for every legislator in Sacramento. And we have turned over the reins to a new branch of government, the ballot, and anything significant must be mandated by a vote of the people. As Julia Brownley, now in her second term, said, "Government structure is broken and we need to fix it... I didn't understand until I set foot in the Legislature the paralysis and gridlock that kills the system." I think Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, who is carrying Constitutional convention legislation in the Senate, put it well when he said that California remains at the vanguard with anything that can be accomplished on a majority-vote basis. Anything with a 2/3 threshold, in other words anything fiscal, is a mess. And it needs to be solved.
So how would a convention, the first of its kind since 1879, be structured? (flip)
In the wake of the latest, but by no means the last, budget mess in California, I continue to believe that the only way to break the deeply negative cycle of fiscal dysfunction and budgetary gridlock is through a Constitutional convention that restores democracy and provides sensible, workable government in the state of California. You'll be interested to know that this belief actually transcends party lines. Tom Karako directs the Golden State Center at the Claremont Institute, one of the nation's most conservative think tanks. And even he agrees that the state's Constitution needs to change to better serve the public. I haven't previously seen a conception of what a conservative vision for a Constitutional convention would look like, and so I think it's worth analyzing it to see their preferred options. Karako first says:
If Californians do rewrite the Constitution, it should be revised to resemble more closely the concise federal Constitution: more responsible legislators and executives, stronger control of the bureaucracy and less direct democracy.
Then he comes up with several issues that appear nowhere in the federal Constitution. Here are his six proposals:
1. Part-time Legislature
2. Hard spending cap
3. Two-year budgeting cycle
4. Eliminate the two-thirds supermajority requirement for budgets
5. Unified executive branch
6. Repeal ballot-box budgeting
The first four are either irrelevant to the federal Constitution or in direct conflict to federal Constitutional provisions. But I will soldier on and take them in kind.
Karako clarifies that his vision of a "part-time legislature" would not be a citizen legislature, and would include the same salaries and responsibilities as today. With all due respect, then, we already have this. State legislative sessions, in theory, open in January and end on August 31, and there are numerous recesses in between those dates. The only reason it seems lately like the legislature is always at work is because four extraordinary sessions have been called in the past year and a half to deal with the budget mess. Our legislature works around six months out of the year in less extraordinary circumstances. That sounds part-time to me.
This notion of a hard spending cap has been soundly rejected by the voters twice in the past four years. It is certainly not a feature of the federal Constitution, and it does not take into account emergency spending needs, the outpacing of inflation over wages in areas like health care, and multiple other provisions. States with spending caps have seen their quality of life suffer and their state rankings plummet (see TABOR in Colorado). This would in my view be disastrous, and obviously it's the major bone of contention between liberals and conservatives.
A two-year budget cycle actually sounds prudent to me. I would supplement it with an advisory long-term budgeting benchmark that would bring the concept of long-term planning back into state government, but anything that looks beyond the horizon could improve the quality of state budgets.
Conservatives have begun to relent on the 2/3 rule for passing a state budget, while keeping in the requirement for taxes, for somewhat selfish reasons. I agree that the current system eliminates accountability for both sides of the aisle, and letting the majority rule on these issues would allow the people to decide the results of that course of action. But Karako doesn't take this to the logical conclusion, that a budget is composed of taxes and spending, and that only with a full repeal of both of these 2/3 provisions would we have representative democracy in this state. He wants to hold one party responsible for budgeting while tying their hands on how to go about instituting that budget.
After citing positively how other states have part-time legislatures, and negatively how only two other states require a 2/3 vote to pass a budget, Karako calls for a "unified executive branch" without mentioning that practically no other state has its Governor appoint all additional Constitutional officers. Some states have Governors appoint certain various members, but not the entire slate. This and the next idea show a typical conservative contempt for the will of the people. Democracy, even direct democracy, is not the problem with California. (This "unified executive branch" is also a cover for vesting greater authority in the executive to engage in, as Karako says, "firing and controlling non-elected bureaucrats and public employee unions," or union-busting, in the vernacular.)
And that leads us to Karako's idea to repeal all ballot-box budgeting, where he does not specify between different types of ballot-box budgeting. Those measures with funding sources provide no strain on the budget process because they do not impact the General Fund. Unfunded mandates do represent a problem, and reformers have devised a solution, essentially "paygo" for ballot initiatives, requiring that they include a funding source before presenting them to voters. Karako, instead, wants to repeal all voter-approved measures and place them under the General Fund. I also believe in the indirect initiative, allowing the legislature a crack at either passing a ballot measure themselves in consultation with the proponents, or changing the language with amendments to better reflect current priorities.
On one thing I agree with Karako; "California needs constitutional reform before we can expect sustained fiscal reform." I don't think his ideas hold to his belief in drawing on the wisdom of the US Constitution; however, I do see some common ground, on two-year budget cycles, on the need for democratic rule, on initiative reform. My belief is that a Constitutional convention could bring together the entire rich diversity of the state to discuss, debate and decide on these issues, coming to a decision that will improve representative government in the state. I'll see Mr. Karako there.
UPDATE by Robert: For a progressive vision of a constitutional convention, the Courage Campaign's Citizens Plan to Reform California (CPR for California) is a good place to start. I plan to write more about it this week.
Maybe you've been following along, but if you haven't, the Senate essentially passed all of their budget bills, albeit with difficulty, and adjourned a session that started last night around 7:30pm at 6:16 this morning. The Assembly is still working through some of the final trailer bills, including the local government raids and the offshore drilling proposal at Tranquillon Ridge. Here's an incomplete roundup from the LA Times.
The worst elements of the bill were passed while everyone was asleep. They must be very proud of their work.
And of course, this is a rolling, perpetual crisis. Dan Walters is correct today when he says that the state now operates on 5-month budget cycles.
There have been some discussions about shifting to a two-year budget cycle to ease the one-year cycle's tight - and usually unmet - timetable. In reality, though, the state has shifted to a five-month cycle, with the latest version of the budget, which was undergoing the dreary drill of adoption Thursday night, being the latest example [...]
If the five-month cycle holds true, the deal's deficiencies will be acknowledged in October, when the state must redeem the IOUs it's sending to creditors. And then legislators will return to Sacramento to be entertained by lobbyists, plug the new holes and collect about $1,200 a week in tax-free per diem checks.
In January, the governor will propose a 2010-11 budget and the game will begin again.
It's as much that the legislature cannot fathom the extremity of the real budget problems as that the cumulative effect of kicking the can becomes greater with every kick. Of course, there's a way out - you could reduce useless tax breaks to corporations and increase revenue. But that's deeply unserious and verboten.
If ever the need for a Constitutional convention to fix the broken system in Sacramento has become clear, it's now, when 40 years of progress has been reversed in the dead of night.
I interviewed Sen. Mark DeSaulnier just a few minutes ago for a series on CA-10 candidates. But I took the opportunity to ask him about the budget deal. Un unusually blunt and what I would characterize as irate language, DeSaulnier blasted the budget and the process that created it. "It's all awful," he said. "On a majority-vote level, with votes that require a majority vote, California still leads the nation. But on a fiscal level, we're living in the Dark Ages. The system is completely dysfunctional and maybe the only good thing is that people will finally see the kind of change we need. Sadly, too many people are still in denial about that change. But we can't go on like this. It's just a mess."
DeSaulnier thinks that the economy is unlikely to change dramatically to bail out this budget, and it will take a long time for General Fund revenues to get to a point to pay off the money borrowed from education. And so we'll remain in this dark place for some time.
The Senator is carrying a bill in the legislature to put together a Constitutional convention, and he is "more convinced than ever" about the need for it. He believes that, after the budget is put the bed, there is an urgent need, recognized by the leadership, to turn completely to reform. Sen. Steinberg has said to him that the message will be nothing but change, change, change. And the caucus wants to work, whether through a revision commission or reforms that could be put together with majority support, to do a "Constitutional convention in the building." Unfortunately, DeSaulnier said, everyone on both sides of the aisle immediately goes to the worst-case scenario of a convention, thinking that their gains and protections will be lost. But that's no excuse. DeSaulnier hoped he could get with Republican leaders like Sam Blakeslee to find common ground on a few reform issues, but he's not sanguine about those choices. "They're individually good people, but put them together and they're a cult, not a party. Milton Friedman's dead, move on."
When I asked what he would vote for on Thursday, he said "I will probably vote against most of it." DeSaulnier singled out two pieces that could not get his support: the offshore drilling in Tranquillon Ridge, and the raid on local governments. On the drilling, he doesn't understand why Democrats would approve such a proposal for a paltry $100 million dollars in this budget year. "I don't know why the Governor would do that. Whatever environmental record he claims to have will go down the tubes. I never thought he was particularly green to begin with, he tried to slow-walk AB32 and all sorts of environmental initiatives. He's the worst Governor in state history, just like George W. Bush was the worst President in history.
On the local government raid, DeSaulnier said that as someone who came from local government, he could not see clear to essentially bankrupt them. Those takings don't take place until December, according to him, so he would rather get the LAO involved, score the kinds of tax credits at the local level, things like enterprise zones that don't work and other giveaways to corporate interests, and suspend them to make local government whole. I think it's an interesting strategy, though I don't know if it could succeed. Tying it to local government needs is smart.
And by the way, the crazy redevelopment money scheme, to borrow against those future funds and securitize 10% of property taxes for 10-20 years? DeSaulnier called that "insane" and "illegal," and just a shadow play by Republicans "so they can go back to San Diego and Riverside and say they tried to save their local money and failed."
DeSaulnier has an election coming up, and thus an incentive to take a bold stand. But this is pretty darn bold. And if there are enough Democrats to go along with him, Republicans may indeed be forced to own this budget.
What I'm hearing from grassroots progressives in this state is basically unadulterated anger at the craptacular budget deal passed. If they're not out in the streets they're calling representatives and finding every opportunity to make themselves known. Karen Bass posted a statement on her Facebook page about the budget deal and it has been hammered by critics. Some negative comments have been deleted. I'm getting practically an email a minute from some progressive group or another talking about stopping this budget.
I think what we have here is, to analogize, a union shop steward bargaining without the support of its rank and file. Whether that will matter to the legislators who vote on this on Thursday is unclear. But if you took the pulse of the activist community, they would argue for one of three things:
(1) send the leadership back to the negotiating table with the mandate that this deal isn't good enough.
(2) send new leadership back to enforce that message, fire Steinberg and Bass
(3) only agree to a deal if Republicans ensure every one of their members will vote for it, so they can own the policy
I don't want to really speculate on what will happen. But I can pretty confidently say that the movement which has become engaged over this budget fight will not be likely to shut up if the Democratic rank-and-file goes along willingly with the leadership and votes this budget into law. They will want to fight and it will probably be those same rank-and-file lawmakers that bear the brunt of it, perhaps even with primary challenges.
As I've said repeatedly, the current structure of government in the state is designed to produce bad outcomes. We can get mad about it, we can mourn the real suffering this will extend throughout the poor and middle class, or we can organize. And the desired end state, IMO, is not just to get a marginally better near-term budget, with maybe an extra billion for an oil severance tax here, or a reduction of borrowing to local governments there, but to get a far better structure inside of which to run government responsibly. I don't think that can possibly end with a fight on this budget, though it may begin with it. Because at some point, progressives do need to reject being taken for granted.
Anyway, thought I'd open it for discussion.
...here's Dave Johnson arguing for option #3, which I think is among the best practices. We have this assumption that any deal must be voted on by all Democrats, with just enough Republicans for passage slinking along. That's not etched in stone.
In addition, let me remind everyone that this budget does NOT require a 2/3 vote. The budget has already been passed; revising it requires only a majority. However, that means it would take effect after 90 days, and only a 2/3 vote will allow it to take effect immediately. Obviously, delaying by 90 days reduces the savings of the deal. But we're probably coming back to this soon enough anyway. And without all Republicans in support, I think you have to allow some Democrats to vote their conscience.
(In addition, budgets are voted on in various multi-bill packages, so any one vote could go down as well. That could be a consideration.)
The latest Big Five meeting is underway, and we could see a yay deal as soon as tonight. Digby, who I'm lucky enough to call a colleague over at Hullabaloo, has a great post about the budget debacle and the collective lack of perspective in politics. She references the 2003 special election freak show and how the media became seduced by marketing and reality-show gamesmanship into cheering on the "Who Wants To Be Governor Of California" spectacle (side note - I actually almost worked on the actual "Who Wants To Be Governor Of California" TV show produced at the time by Game Show Network). And while turning the recall into a game, everyone forgot about the insanity of the associated issue:
The "issue" that supposedly precipitated this little tantrum was the required restoration to earlier higher rates for car registration, brought about by a weakening of the economy. The media went wild, even friends of mine who know absolutely nothing about politics pretended to be enraged that they would be forced to pay $30.00 more a year and they all went out and voted to recall the Governor and replace him with The Terminator.
That recall was a political sideshow of epic proportions, featuring porn stars, Gary Coleman and even Arianna. It was great fun. Standing in line to vote that day -- the longest line I'd ever experienced at the ballot box --- was like being at an American Idol party.
But check it out. In an otherwise terrible George Skelton column, he does make one interesting observation:
Schwarzenegger had campaigned full throttle against Gov. Gray Davis' "outrageous" raising of the vehicle license fee. His favorite stunt was using a wrecking ball to smash an old jalopy that symbolized the tax.
Davis really had only bumped the fee back to its historic level: to 2% of a vehicle's value, rather than a recently enacted 0.65%.
Schwarzenegger's canceling of the fee hike actually amounted to the single biggest spending increase of his reign. That's because all the revenue from the vehicle license fee had gone to local governments, and Schwarzenegger generously agreed to make up their losses by shipping them money from the state general fund.
The annual drain on the state treasury was $6.3 billion until February. Then the governor and Legislature raised the fee to 1.15% of vehicle value, saving the state $1.7 billion. But it will revert to its lower level in two years.
Cutting the car tax plunged the state deeper into debt just as Schwarzenegger was taking the wheel. To cover it -- at least temporarily -- the new governor went on a borrowing binge. It didn't take much to persuade the Legislature and voters to authorize $15 billion in "economic recovery bonds."
Passing those bonds and a companion spending "reform," the governor promised, would mean "no more deficit financing." They'd live within their means. Sacramento would "tear up the credit card and throw it away."
The only thing thrown away was all the bond money, spent long ago on daily expenses -- the equivalent of borrowing to buy groceries.
I'm not saying the car fee issue is the reason the state is currently in chaos. It's far deeper and more complicated than that. But I do believe that the simplistic, downright silly approach Americans take to politics is largely to blame. It long ago became more about marketing and entertainment --- and preening, shallow self-gratification --- than serious consideration of responsible governance.
I would be remiss if I didn't total up the $6.3 billion a year in lost revenue from the vehicle license fee, along with the interest on those needless economic recovery bonds, and note that the total is surely more than the current budget deficit or even the last two combined.
But Digby's main point is correct. When the media in this state bothers to pay attention to politics, it's as a freak show, and they ascribe the same kind of reporting available in the sports section rather than give anyone the information they need to make serious choices about what kind of state they'd like to live in. The so-called "car tax" was the kind of populist pitchfork-fest that was perfect for Schwarzenegger, and he repeated enough movie quotes and manipulated enough emotions to prevail. Along the way, almost nobody challenged the thesis, nobody provided the truth about the VLF, nobody slid the debate from the zaniness of the recall - porn stars! - into the serious business of a government that works.
Digby thinks that "we are going to have to reform more than the state constitution to fix things. We need to reform politics itself somehow, convince people that it isn't American Idol or the World Series, or the ruling class will always be able to afford to put on a show whenever they need to manipulate the folks and the folks will probably fall for it." And I agree with that to an extent: for one, the system cannot be reformed without a responsible citizenry understanding the reasons why. But I'm enough of a goo-goo to believe that enough people can become energized by taking back their government so that the seriousness and the structure will be injected back into California's system. That's why I believe sweeping constitutional reform is in the end the only option - because a status quo system will only empower the types of shenanigans that brought us both the Governator and hundreds of thousands if not millions of residents left with no help and no hope. To get the circus out of town, we must offer an alternative to the sideshow that is our government. If enough of us wish to be a laughingstock no more, it can be done.
The Bay Area Council has been promoting an effort to convene a constitutional convention, through legislation or through initiative. Their most recent draft of the language has been spreading around, and suffice it to say there are some problems:
The main group advocating for an overhaul of California's constitution is circulating draft initiative language that would bar a constitutional convention from changing the property tax portions of Proposition 13.
The 2,000 word draft document has been distributed to numerous stakeholders and experts by the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco-based business group that has been outspoken in calling for an overhaul of the state's governing document.
A spokesman for the group, John Grubb, said the document is still going through a revision process. But he does not expect the language about Prop. 13 and property taxes to change. (CapWeekly 6/22/09)
If we are to truly reform California, then let's cut the bullshit. There should be no sacred cows. We need to build a system of governance built truly from the ground up, or it becomes unclear whether the project is worth doing at all. If we are going to have poison pills from our current constitution built in from Day 1, what hope do we really have of building a workable system?
The BAC's reasoning is pretty traditional stuff really, they are worried of Howard Jarvis' ghost and a few "senior groups." If these supposed senior groups were really looking out for seniors, they would join the California Alliance for Retired Americans in calling for a fair and just budget that provides for services for the elderly, not a system that merely traffics in truism in how seniors are terrified of losing their homes.
The fact is Prop 13 was never about seniors losing their homes, it was merely a powerful political ploy to lower the taxes of corporations. And that is precisely what it has done. Howard Jarvis himself was before the Prop 13 extravaganza, just another apartment owners' group attack dog. Prop 13 was really pure genius on the apartment and commercial property owners' part. They get to use shell games and transfer their properties in whatever way they want, and never have to reassess their property. It's a pretty slick little system, and it is why most their is a growing movement to fix prop 13. In fact, San Francisco's assessor-recorder, Phil Ting, is pushing a Close the Loophole effort to split the commercial and residential property tax rolls.
But the Bay Area Council really can't be treated as some savior group. It's not some creature of the grassroots, it is merely an organization of large bay are companies. And that they want to preserve Prop 13, shouldn't really be all that shocking. But if progressives are going to work on this effort, we must work to ensure that all options really on the table. Cut the third rail fears and just work from the ground up. Otherwise, it might just be more wise to pursue other avenues to reform.
While we are all concerned about the 2/3 rule for the budget, and, of course, the 2/3 rule for revenues. But what about that other, other 2/3 rule? The one for the ballot, that requires a 2/3 vote of the people for increases in revenue.
It's a real pain too. In fact, that rule caused the defeat of two measures that were supported by over 60% of the electorate. These were two parcel taxes that would have allowed the school districts to ave the jobs of teachers. Take Measure E in Redwood City for example:
In the midst of a deep economic recession, voters rejected Tuesday a parcel tax measure that would have helped the Redwood City School District weather cuts in state funding.
With all precincts reporting, Measure E had 62.1 percent of voters in favor of the tax compared to 37.9 percent opposed, short of the two-thirds approval it needed to pass, according to returns from Tuesday's election. (SJ Merc 6/2/09)
You're talking about 62.1% of the population wanting to do something, but some out-dated, ridiculous law blocks them from taxing themselves. The same thing happened in Pleasanton, where over 61% approved the parcel tax. At some point, the voters of California need to at least give themselves enough credit to decide something with a simple majority.
How are we to govern under these rules? It simply isn't possible for the people of California to constantly be fighting battles at these ridiculous thresholds. Would any sort of business operate like this? These are local taxes for crying out loud, yet the state constitution is once again blocking the will of the people. Not for some greater purpose, not for civil rights (looking at you, Prop 8), but simply because some organization thought they could screw up the state a little further.
Not only is the initiative system broken beyond repair, the entire constitution has got to go. It's time to Repair California.
As David Atkins discusses today, the decision on Prop. 8 by the State Supreme Court basically elevates the people as a Fourth Branch of government that cannot be countermanded by the judicial branch, no matter what their whims decide. The Court said, "the system may be broken - depending on your perspective - but that's the system we have, and we're powerless to do anything about it."
Thoughts at this point turn to the need for a transformation of this Constitution, to restore the balance of representative democracy, with a judiciary enabled to determine Constitutionality, with a legislative branch given their mandate by the people to reflect the popular will, with an executive secure in his or her role. While I do not believe that "the people" should be endlessly demonized for the options they have been given by a flawed process, I do believe that the verdict has been delivered on this form of government, and delivered as a failure. In an extraordinary discussion unrelated to the Prop. 8 case, the Governor today basically admits California is ungovernable even while vowing to follow the "will of the people," a will which he fails to properly define. Most of the rant Arnold made today involves him whining that he's not allowed to be a dictator. But some of it is brutally revealing.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger considers himself a glass-half-full guy, and he ended his California Small Business Day speech in Sacramento with a dose of optimism. But it seemed clear the governor has just about had it with California's governance system, especially after last week's special election was a colossal failure. Though he blamed many of the state's budget problems on the current economic collapse, he said part of our woes are "self-inflicted."
"California hasn't had a responsible fiscal system since Earl Warren in the late '40s and early '50s," he said.
The governor ticked off a number of complaints about the system this morning:
• The state relies too much on personal-income and capital gains taxes.
• The state doesn't have a spending cap, nor a "rainy-day fund" (the latter point is questionable given that Schwarzenegger asked voters to establish a "rainy-day" reserve in 2004, albeit one with weak restrictions).
• Federal judges tell California how to run its prison health-care system.
• Federal stimulus rules restrict how California can cut from its budget.
• California requires a two-thirds vote to approve the budget.
• An "endless list" of ballot-box budgeting requirements, including Propositions 13, 42, 49 and 1A, all of which he has championed in the past.
"Until we fix our system, nothing will ever change," Schwarzenegger said. "This is no way, of course, to run a state."
He's crying about "federal judges" who merely enforce the Constitutional right of prisoners not to be allowed to die as a cause of their incarceration. And the federal stimulus rules don't restrict a damn thing, they merely require a certain threshold of service to qualify for federal funds. Waah waah waah. But the last two are truly amazing. Schwarzenegger ADMITS the two-thirds rule has completely hamstrung government, and that "an endless list" of ballot-box budgeting have distorted the balance of power in California. Prop. 49 is the after-school program initiative that SCHWARZENEGGER HIMSELF put on the ballot prior to his tenure in office.
Arnold's press people tried to walk this back today, but this was a Kinsleyan gaffe where he made the mistake of telling the truth. Schwarzenegger has always wanted to claim to know the will of the people, and he pretty much got it right when he let his guard down today - Californians want a functional government with a basic level of services funded equitably, and they want lawmakers to do the job they were elected to do. "The people" are a Fourth Branch who want no part of being elected or serving.
The next batch of gubernatorial wannabes have a mixed record on Constitutional reform. Some reports claim that they are more interested with the rhetoric of change than offering anything specific and incurring the wrath of the unelected Fourth Branch. If in fact candidates run in this fashion, they will discover an electorate actually more interested in solutions than mantras, more interested in fundamental reform than careening along this unsustainable path. And 19 months later, when one of them sits in the office in Sacramento and actually looks deeply at the situation in which they find themselves, they'll have wished longingly for a whole raft of specific reforms they could implement right away. Because otherwise, they will sink under the weight of a top-heavy, broken governmental system.
The hopes of receiving loan guarantees backed by the federal government to help California secure borrowing to cover short-term cash issues dissipated the moment the media started calling something that wouldn't cost the government a dime a "bailout." With Democrats essentially mimicking their Republican counterparts and the rhetoric of a fiscal reckoning predominant, a solution based on massive program cuts and eliminations appears inevitable to everyone in Sacramento. Only regular citizens - the same ones demonized by elites for daring to vote against what elites call "their own interests" - hold legitimate interests in stopping the drive to cut our way out of this crisis. Students in Los Angeles are holding walkouts over proposed firings of teachers. The families who would be most directly hit by canceling programs like Healthy Families (California's SCHIP), CalWorks (serving poor families) and Cal Grants (student grants-in-aid for college) are speaking out about the real-world effects of those cuts. And a growing movement of activists from across the political spectrum are looking to the future by trying to turn this crisis into a tipping point for a Constitutional convention to get the state onto a sounder fiscal course.
The silence from the political leadership on these fronts is deafening. And yet, absolutely everyone knows the remedies to perpetual crisis and long-term dysfunction, remedies that too rarely cross the lips of leadership so that such opinions could actually make it to the minds of the electorate. Evan Halper today provides some relief in this desert with an oasis of an article, explaining in clear language exactly what steps can be taken to transform California into something other than the failed state it is. I don't agree with all of it - Halper asserts that the richest 1% of the state contribute half of the income tax, which is simply a function of inequality and frankly irrelevant; he leaves out that the effective tax rate for the top 1% (around 7% of income) is LOWER than that for those with the state's lowest incomes (around 11%) - but it's still worth reading. An excerpt:
The oft-cited waste and abuse is a problem, but the deficit is bigger than the entire state bureaucracy.
California could fire every state employee -- including well-paid prison guards and university professors -- close every government office, stop all travel and even cease the purchase of paper clips without closing the budget gap. The government would be gone but the deficit wouldn't [...]
The runaway spending is caused largely by an ever growing group of Californians making use of basic state services as the cost of those services escalates. Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, for example, the amount the state spends on Medi-Cal health insurance for the poor has grown more than 40%, from under $10 billion annually to more than $14.4 billion. Spending on community mental health services has nearly tripled, and the state's program that provides services for the disabled leapt from a $1.6-billion annual expense to nearly $2.4 billion.
This has happened despite efforts by the state to contain costs. Primary care doctors, for example, are paid just $26 for an office visit with a Medi-Cal patient. There is no simple way to seriously limit these healthcare costs short of eliminating the benefits for hundreds of thousands of Californians.
Halper's five steps - updating the tax structure, eliminating the 2/3 rule, reining in citizen initiatives, building a real rainy day fund and instituting a performance review - are a mixed bag IMO, but they take a legitimate, serious approach to reforming the governmental structure, coming from the position that the current system is exactly how not to run a state. Regardless of these solutions, a debate on which we can and should have, that viewpoint makes me hopeful. I believe people are starting to understand the intractable nature of the current process, a thought echoed by Jean Ross in her special election post-mortem:
So why do I believe that the May 19 results can be viewed as a triumph of hope over fear? I spent the better part of the last two and a half months traversing California, talking about the budget, the special election, and California's future. From San Diego to the North Bay, I spoke before diverse audiences ranging from Orange County PTA activists to Silicon Valley community leaders, from philanthropists to East Bay nonprofit leaders and community organizers in Los Angeles. While California faces tremendous challenges - the worst economic downturn in the post-World War II era and budget crises that show little prospect of abating - I found a new level of interest, concern, and commitment to building a better future for all Californians.
While I am not going to argue that the thousands of individuals that I met are a representative sample, they do represent the best that the state has to offer. Parents who volunteer to improve the quality of their children's schools and public education more broadly; nonprofit service providers who struggle in the face of tight budgets and rising demand to care for the state's most vulnerable; and interested voters who got up early or stayed out late to learn the about the state's finances, how we ended up in the mess we're in, and how to get out. Almost universally, I met voters deeply dismayed by, but profoundly interested in fundamentally addressing, the state's budget challenges [...]
In the midst of all this doom and gloom, I found an underlying sense of optimism. The afterglow of the November election has brought new activists to the table and rekindled a belief that change is possible. There is also a sense of realism and an understanding that tough choices lie ahead. The ambitious federal efforts to stem the economic downturn, stabilize financial markets, and rein in the excesses of private markets are beginning to help voters see government as a solution to, rather than the cause of, economic malaise.
Our leaders have failed. Our people have not. In fact, they're just getting started.
Via OC Progressive, Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, Chair of the Budget Committee, spells out slowly for everyone the structural problems and false assertions about the California budget process. If you have non-political junkie friends who want to understand this in a quick and easy way, pass them this link.
This is a very good place to start. Evans puts the lie to three big myths about California:
1) The "runaway spending" assertion. Um, no. Population and inflation accounts for 68% of the increase. I LOVE how Evans cites the tough on crime sentencing laws as a key element of over-spending, in this case on prisons (20% of the inflation and population-adjusting spending increase). Ballot-box budgeting with no dedicated funding stream (separate from the initiatives voters stopped lawmakers from raiding yesterday, which have funding sources) also contributes to the problem. And there are the prior tax cuts like Prop. 13 and Arnold's VLF cut (which would have filled this ENTIRE current deficit). To cover for this we sell bonds and now have to pay out interest to service that debt. The problems beget more problems, and necessitate more cuts because the conservative veto resists taxes.
2) There's all these "waste" in the budget. Again, no. The Performance Review of 2004 found virtually nothing that would save the state any real money.
3) It's just all that messy partisanship from both sides. No. The Democrats have made $40 billion in cuts over the past several years. The Norquistian Yacht Party won't budget because they don't have to. Evans details the 2/3 requirement and the conservative veto, and cites Norquist himself!
Seriously, pass this to your friends. Facebook it and Twitter about it. If you internalize these concepts, the solutions are obvious - we need to restore democracy and give our elected officials a budget process and a Constitution they can actually navigate.
And while we're at it, let me debunk one other myth. The one that says all California has to do is sell San Quentin and all that surplus property and save the state. Well, the money raised from selling state property would not be able to be used to balance the budget.
Under the terms of Proposition 60A, approved by voters in November 2004, proceeds from the sale of any state surplus property can only be used to pay the interest on $15 billion in budget-balancing bonds sought by the GOP governor and approved by voters in March of the same year.
Once the bonds are paid off - the Legislative Analyst estimated at the time that cash from the sale of surplus property would speed retirement of the 30-year notes by a "few months" - sale proceeds would be deposited in the state's reserve account for emergencies.
