They had no way of knowing it, but when voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978, they created a nettlesome juxtaposition of sociopolitical megatrends.

The measure – which imposed a tight limit on local property taxes – was enacted just as California began to undergo massive demographic and economic shifts, and as the state Capitol's culture was changing.

The unintended consequence was that fiscal power of an increasingly complex state was shifted from local voters and officials into a Capitol that was becoming more crassly political, more ideologically divided and ill-equipped to make effective policy.

The result, more than three decades later, is political paralysis, as the chronic budgetary imbroglio attests.

It is impossible for the governor and the Legislature to make one-size-fits-all fiscal policy for the most complex society in the Western Hemisphere.

Jerry Brown, who was governor when Proposition 13 passed and is back in the gubernatorial saddle again, acknowledges this fundamental problem by proposing what he calls "realignment" – pushing some programs back down to county governments.

It's a part of Brown's larger budget plan and one of the many segments he has yet to nail down. Financing for the programs would come from an extension of temporary sales, income and car taxes that is stalled in the Legislature.

Meanwhile, the president pro tem of the Senate, Darrell Steinberg, proposes to go even further with legislation that would authorize counties to levy, with local voter approval, a wide variety of income, sales, cigarette, liquor, excise, car and mineral extraction taxes.

The legislation could be passed with simple majority votes and is probably meant to persuade Republicans to cooperate on Brown's tax proposal.

Political ploy or not, however, Steinberg's Senate Bill 653 is an intriguing alternative to having a dysfunctional Legislature attempt to make policy for 5,000 units of local government via the state budget.

Californians vary widely in their receptivity to tax increases, and that variance has a major geographic element. Coastal counties are more liberal on such things, while those east of the Coast Range are more conservative.

The state could provide a basic framework of services and let localities augment them if they wish.

If San Franciscans want to tax themselves heavily to provide a vast array of services, they should be allowed to do so. If Placer County residents don't want to do it, that should be their privilege as well.

One could argue that it would exacerbate the fragmentation of the state into mutually hostile tribes, but it's happening anyway.

Steinberg's legislation could set up a healthy economic and lifestyle competition and let the chips fall where they may – which would relieve Sacramento of the impossible job of making policy for everyone.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.

• Read more articles by Dan Walters