What if California had not 120 legislators, but 240 of them, with each Senate and Assembly district required to elect two representatives – a man and a woman?
B.C. Keith wants voters to ponder that question. The Sacramento woman has until May 29 to collect the valid voters' signatures – all 807,615 of them – that she needs for her petition to be placed on the ballot.
Keith told The Bee back in November that she sees her idea as a solution to gender inequality under the dome. Currently, 34 women serve as legislators, which means that 72 percent of the lawmakers are men.
Would voters go for doubling the size of the Legislature, given their mood about government spending? Doing so, the Legislative Analyst's Office noted last month, could cost counties millions more for elections.
The Green Party member has another hill to climb. The state and U.S. constitutions "prohibit the enactment of laws that discriminate or provide preferential treatment based on gender," the LAO pointed out.
Even so, the retired engineering technician for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may be disinclined to drum up buzz about her proposal.
A woman answering the telephone listed in Keith's name told a caller last Friday: "This number is on the government's do-not-call list, and I'd like you to put it on yours as well," then hung up.
>BY THE NUMBERS
California spent $6 billion on welfare services in 2011, and CalWORKs – its welfare-to-work program – is its largest cash grant program. According to the most recent data from the Department of Social Services, 1.4 million people applied for aid from CalWORKs in July, 1.1 million of them 18 or younger. That month, its cash grants totaled $269 million.
>WORTH REPEATING
"Breaking: If you want to build stadiums on taxpayer dime, you are NOT a conservative."
JON FLEISCHMAN, Republican blogger and no fan of redevelopment agencies, via FlashReport's Twitter feed
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