California finally has a new budget, more than 80 days late. But even legislators who in years past have claimed to solve the state's chronic fiscal problems aren't pretending this time that they have finished the job. And the public seems more frustrated than ever with the governor, lawmakers and the entire budget process, perhaps even the basic structure of our government.
Is this the moment for fundamental reform? Close observers of state government have been warning for years that the entire enterprise, like some debt-ridden Wall Street bank, is headed for collapse. Polarized into partisan camps, unable to bring spending into line with tax revenues, the Legislature keeps pushing the state's problems off into the future. But with each new year, the problems seem to get worse, not better, and the solutions more elusive.
"It often appears as though our representatives are more interested in satisfying the most ideological Californians rather than the moderate majority," Ash Roughani, a California State University, Sacramento, graduate student, told me last week. "It's like they would rather divide us to stop things from getting done than actually work together to achieve consensus. We need political reform before we can have meaningful education reform, health care reform or fiscal reform."
Yet the same voters who seem to believe the system is broken have also rejected most recent attempts to reform it. Changes to the way we draw political boundaries and elect legislators, a tweaking of term limits, and a proposal to reduce the super-majority required to pass a budget have all been defeated on recent ballots.
In a poll released last week, the Public Policy Institute of California found that 76 percent of adults surveyed believe that major changes are needed in the way the state does its budgeting. Three-fourths of Californians rarely agree on anything, so that degree of consensus ought to be a wake-up call to the political establishment. But those surveyed don't agree on exactly what should be done. Just like their legislators, they are divided.
More than six in 10, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, say they would like to place strict new limits on the annual growth of state spending. But a majority of Democrats would also like to repeal the rule that requires the approval of two-thirds of each house of the Legislature to pass a budget, while most Republicans oppose that idea. The divisions would be even sharper if you asked voters whether the two-thirds rule for approving tax increases should also be repealed.
One way to overcome those divisions would be to create a process designed to reach broad consensus on a series of reforms that could be presented to voters as a package. Republicans, for instance, might be more apt to support majority votes for the budget if they were also getting a spending limit. In the same vein, voters might back a tweak to California's super-strict term limits if they also got real change in the way political boundaries are drawn.
Three such options are discussed on these pages today. One is a constitutional convention, which would allow a top-to-bottom re- assessment of California government with the results put on the ballot, probably in a single package. The Legislature would have to ask the voters to call a convention, and its purview would be limited only by what its members believed the voters would eventually accept.
Another is a constitution review commission. This would be created by the governor and the Legislature, who would appoint its members. Its role would be purely advisory. Any recommendations for changing the constitution would have to be placed on the ballot the regular way, via a two-thirds vote in the Legislature or by initiative.
A third method is called a citizens assembly. The voters would be asked to create this body, sort of like a super grand jury, and give it a narrow charge. The assembly would have dozens of members, with some elected from every part of the state. Its proposals could go on the ballot automatically, either as a package or a series of individual measures.
Each of these approaches involves either the Legislature or the voters in its creation. Another, quicker way of getting at the same problem is for a group of concerned citizens to gather on their own and seek to build broad support for change. This approach is more flexible, and probably simpler. But it faces the challenge of earning legitimacy for its recommendations from the Legislature and the public. At least one such group, California Forward, is seeking to follow that model already.
But no matter what the approach, it seems clear that California's state government is dysfunctional and probably needs fundamental change. The budget mess and major problems in health care, education, the prisons and other services are building to a level that the public will not long continue to ignore. If the state's fiscal crisis turns next year into a full-fledged meltdown, which it could, the voters just might be ready to try some radical reforms.
Call The Bee's Daniel Weintraub, (916) 321-1914.
