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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)
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