Most folks in any way exposed to the workings of Sacramento know that it’s one of the most dyfunctional government systems we have in the country. It’s a systematic issue and not one related to specific legislators, as I actually admire many of our state elected representatives. However, they are paralyzed by a system that makes it very difficult to deliver on the needed change in the state.
Today I attended a conference hosted by the CCS Partnership (CCS = Cities, Counties, Schools), which is a joint effort of the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties and the California School Boards Association. The Partnership promotes the development of public policies that center around fixing California’s governance and financial systems based on the needs of all of these local jurisdictions.
The conference today focused on both what is generally considered the problems with CA state government, as well some of the potential paths to solve some of these problems. Although I have discussed some of these before, a number of the issues that came up include:
- The State’s 2/3 required to pass a budget or to levy taxes (of which only three states have such a requirement)
- Term limits of State Legislators (which, among other things, has the side effect of transferring power to the political party and quelling dissenting ideas)
- The incredible restriction on local government agencies (schools, cities, etc) to raise their own sources of revenue (which would be a system having the officials closest to the people held accountable for their actions)
- Unfunded mandates from the state
- The public initiative process, which ironic to its original intent, is actually a tool of special interests and creates the phenomenon of “ballot box budgeting”
- The reliance of the State on very cyclical forms of revenue streams and the lack of longer-term budgeting and planning
- The connection of school districts and cities to this cyclical form of revenue, with school funding coming from the state and the state being able to borrow or take local funds.
- The extremely convoluted California Constitution, which has been amended over 500 times and is apparently the third longest constitution in the WORLD (including comparing it to all other countries!)
- The effects of Proposition 13 as it relates to a lot of the above
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
On the one hand, it seems like a daunting problem with such built-in inertia that one wonders if it any significant reform can be made. The room today was filled with over a hundred local leaders (representatives from the county, cities, and schools) who all felt strongly that something must be done. Also, these sorts of meetings are happening in other parts of the state as well. Ironically, some of the fixes may need to include using the very system which is broken in order to fix it. For example, it will likely take a public initiative to fix and limit the public initiative process. Some of the specific efforts that were discussed include:
- Proposals within the State legislature itself to address some of these issues (although it’s unlikely that the financial issues can be addressed from within the legislature, as for example it would take a 2/3 majority of the legislature to put an initiative on the ballot to remove the 2/3 majority budget requirement)
- Proposals to prevent the State from dipping in to local sources of money
- Proposals to allow counties, cities, and school districts to work together (almost like a separate agency) to raise local funds independent of the state
- A proposal for a California Constitutional Convention to effectively re-do the Constitution and in so doing, presumably include a lot of these reforms
- Proposals, including the one with which my colleague Mark Olbert has been involved, to reduce the parcel tax threshold from 67% to 55%.
Obviously there are many different flavors of reform, and if anything I think the danger is that there may be so many initiatives on the ballot in the upcoming elections that the public may be very confused (and bombarded by campaign messages from all sides) that chances of passing may be diminished. However, it’s important to keep an eye on all of this, and get involved in what you support, because clearly we need to do something to fix this state.
