Author: SacBee — Opinion

California can rightly be proud to be bucking a national trend. Teenage girls here are giving birth in record low numbers. The opposite is true nationally.

Governors dating back to Pete Wilson, along with the California Department of Public Health, deserve praise for funding a wide array of programs aimed at combating teen births.

The rate of births among girls ages 15 to 19 fell to 35.2 for every 1,000 females in 2008, down from 37.1 births in 2007. The drop has been steady since 1991, when there were 70.9 births for every 1,000 girls, twice the most recent rate. Back then, California’s rate also was significantly higher than the nation as a whole.

California has taken an enlightened approach with programs including abstinence, counseling, contraceptives, and state-funded abortions for unwanted pregnancies.

It has come at some cost. The state has refused $70 million from the federal government, because Congress and presidents insisted that states follow an ostrich-like abstinence-only model. California is the only state in the nation that consistently refused the money, dating back to 1997.

While California’s teen birth rate declines, the national rate rises. In 2007, there were 42.5 births for 1,000 girls nationwide. The national rate would be worse if not for the diminishing California numbers.

California still faces challenges. Altogether, teens bore 51,704 babies in 2008. Birth rates remain high among Latinas, though those numbers declined, to 56.9 from a rate of 61.9 for every 1,000 in 2007. Rates are high in much of the Central Valley.

California’s budget crisis threatens the progress. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ax is aimed at a $225 million program called Family PACT, short for planning, access, care and treatment.

The cut would be shortsighted. The program is credited with averting an estimated 300,000 pregnancies a year. Some would result in abortions, others in births. All would come at a cost, $2 billion, according to the state.

The administration would impose this cut only if the Obama administration fails to provide sufficient health care funds. Obama opposes the abstinence-only concept. The feds now need to take the next step by helping California’s overall effort.

A game of brinksmanship between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state employee unions has so far produced no clear winner. But there are clear losers: State workers and taxpayers.

State employees have lost income because of the governor’s furlough orders of the last 13 months, including three-day-a-month furloughs for the last eight.

Schwarzenegger so far has lost a key lawsuit challenging furloughs of employees whose positions are financed outside of the general fund. That could ultimately force taxpayers to reimburse these employees hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay.

The governor is appealing the ruling by an Alameda Superior Court judge, as is to be expected. Unfortunately, the continuing legal battle and labor impasse distract everyone from the real culprit in this impasse – the Democratic leadership of the Legislature.

Lawmakers, if they chose, could use their leverage to bring both state employee unions and the governor to the bargaining table. If both sides were motivated, such negotiations could result in payroll reductions that were more targeted and more even-handed than across-the-board furloughs or layoffs.

Sadly, that is unlikely to happen, given the politics at play. Schwarzenegger seems content to allow his appeal to play out, postponing costs to the next governor. The unions seem content to delay any real contract concession talks, hoping they will get a better deal with the next governor.

Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg seems content to stay on the sidelines. Steinberg says the ruling should send the governor a “clear directive” to cut a labor agreement with the unions. It’s a nice sound bite, but a pact will never happen if labor leaders are unmotivated to negotiate.

Lawmakers have ways to apply pressure, if they choose. Under the Ralph Dills Act, it is the Legislature that appropriates funds for employee contracts. As the law says, “If the Legislature does not approve or fully fund any provision” of an employee contract, “either party may reopen negotiations on all or part” of the contract.

Currently, all state worker contracts – except the one with California Highway Patrol officers – have expired. As the Legislative Analyst’s Office has said, “The Legislature could adopt across-the-board salary reductions but provide the administration and bargaining units with some time to develop alternatives.” That would put pressure on the parties to come to real agreement – or the reductions would kick in.

Further, the Dills Act requires that any agreement on concessions would have to come back to the Legislature. Why? Because “If any provision … requires the expenditure of funds, those provisions … shall not become effective unless approved by the Legislature in the annual Budget Act.”

Without action by the Legislature, the state has little leverage at the bargaining table. All parties know it. Steinberg and other Democrats should end the folly and get serious about resolving the furlough battle in a manner that serves the state’s overall interests.

Finally, students, parents, faculty and administrators are coming to the right place to confront the governor and lawmakers about the state’s eroding commitment to higher education – and public education in general.

It is the governor and lawmakers who have set state spending and taxing priorities, which have made deep budget cuts to California’s public colleges and universities.

On Thursday, expect thousands from K-12 schools, community colleges, state universities and the University of California to descend on the Capitol for an “Educate the State” rally to protest 32 percent fee increases (not gradual, predictable increases that families can prepare for) and cuts to instruction and access.

The timing is right during this 50th anniversary year of the Master Plan for Higher Education. That 1960 plan made a commitment that “all Californians should be afforded the opportunity to receive a college education.” It made California a national model. And for a generation, the 1960 Master Plan delivered prosperity to the state and a higher standard of living for residents.

But a gradual, steady decline in state funding for higher education over the last 30 years has diminished that promise. The state has drifted, without any deliberate choice of policy, toward quasi-privatization – increasing student fees and private funding from individuals, corporations, foundations and the federal government.

The energy and activism on the campuses since September have already gone far in dispelling myths and widening awareness about higher education in California. Most students do not come from privileged backgrounds. They see a bleak job market and wonder how they will pay for a college education. Training beyond high school remains essential to upward mobility and opportunity for a new generation, where the marketplace demands flexibility and a wide range of skills.

To date, students have hosted seminars on the history of public education in the state and the financing of public colleges. A handful of students have engaged in vandalism at some marches and rallies, but the overwhelming majority are engaging in the long American tradition of protest – and even civil disobedience.

The reality is that the state faces a deep economic downturn, a structural budget deficit and a politically polarized governor and Legislature.

With Thursday’s rally, students, parents, faculty and staff can elevate the public conversation on the challenges facing higher education. They can press legislators to reclaim public education as a top priority in California, a nonpartisan goal.

They also can send a strong message about where they are willing to make sacrifices to make California a better place in these difficult times.

Welcome to Sacramento, home of the people’s house, your state Capitol.

What You Can Do

Thursday’s “Educate the State” rally will run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the west steps of the Capitol.

John A. Pérez was sworn in Monday as the California Assembly’s 68th speaker. He offered a good speech, promising to limit special-interest influence and return to a more transparent process of approving the state budget.

“I’ve already announced that the budget will not be written behind closed doors in Big 5 meetings,” Pérez said Monday. “A full Budget Committee and subcommittee process will ensure all members get to participate”

Pérez is in his honeymoon period, so we will grant him a few months to deliver on the goods. It could well be that his commitment to open government will withstand the test of time.

Yet as Pérez well knows, some of his predecessors made similar promises, only to betray the public with backroom budget deals in the dead of night.

So far, the signs are less than encouraging that Pérez will stray far from the pack.

Despite claims of wanting to work with the GOP, Pérez voted against state Sen. Abel Maldonado in his bid for lieutenant governor. He wants to ban lobbyists from texting lawmakers on the Assembly floor, but has no trouble schmoozing with them otherwise. (Hours after his speech, he had a fundraiser scheduled at the Citizen Hotel.)

Pérez can strike all the right notes about “the people’s house,” etc., but his main goal as speaker will be to raise money for his party and keep its majority in the Assembly. Everything he does will be viewed through that prism.

It is hard not to feel some sympathy for Pérez. Because of term limits, the Assembly is effectively forced to place a rookie in the role of speaker. Fabian Núñez was in such a position, and just as he was building strength as a speaker and scoring some legislative accomplishments, his term was up. He was out of a job.

Pérez’s challenge will be to build strength quickly without abusing it, while showing he takes orders from no one.

In an adjoining editorial, we’ve urged Democrats to use their leverage with state employee unions to seek a negotiated resolution to the furlough fight. If Pérez were to use his position in such a way, it would be a sign of good things to come.

Students, educators and administrators from across the state will descend on the state Capitol on Thursday for an “Educate the State” rally. The aim is worthy: to promote the value of higher education to the state and protest rapidly increasing student fees, fewer courses and larger class sizes.

The issue of declining support from the state for higher education is real. Thirty years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to the University of California and California State University and 3 percent went to prisons. Today, nearly 11 percent goes to prisons and 7.5 percent goes to our public universities.

But given California’s deep economic and budgetary crisis, it is not enough to demand that the state just increase higher education funding.

Higher education advocates need to show that they understand the state’s financial situation and are responding to it.

A prime area for action: the unrelenting growth of administration – an ever-wider assortment of associate and assistant vice presidents, deans and directors. Some refer to this growth as “bureaucratic accretion,” others as “administrative bloat.”

Elsewhere, this growth has jokingly been referred to as a proliferation of “deans of dean services,” but it is no laughing matter. Administrators are among the highest paid people on the campuses, typically earning $100,000 or more.

The University of California stands out in this trend. Charles Schwartz, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a lone crusader on this issue for 20 years, has noted: “Administrative growth is not unique to UC, but the rate of growth is higher at UC than most public or private universities.”

Thus, the University of California should take the lead in cutting the explosive growth in senior management. It would put public universities in a better position in calling for the state to shift its own spending priorities away from prisons and toward higher education.

The university’s hiring trends are going in the wrong direction.

Systemwide over the past 10 years, student enrollment at the University of California has increased 40 percent. During the same period, total employment has increased 30 percent. That looks reasonable.

But two categories of UC employment stand out. As the accompanying chart shows, the number of full-time senior administrators has nearly doubled – from 4,299 to 8,470, a 97 percent increase. In contrast, the numbers of full-time tenure-track faculty have grown from 7,175 to 8,851, a 23 percent increase.

Put another way, the university now has nearly as many senior administrators as faculty. In the mid-1990s, UC had two times as many faculty as senior administrators. Two decades ago, UC had nearly three times as many faculty as senior administrators.

The upshot: If the number of senior administrators had grown at the same rate as total employment in the last decade, UC would have about 5,600 administrators – not 8,500. That’s nearly 3,000 more than would be expected – adding up to about $300 million yearly. That’s not chump change.

Even the most recent numbers show that the Board of Regents and top executives have little stomach for confronting this issue. Last year, while student enrollment increased 1.8 percent, total employment decreased and faculty numbers remained flat, the numbers of senior administrators increased 3 percent.

If the university wants more money from the state, the regents, system President Mark Yudof, the 10 campus chancellors and 250 top executives must shrink the disproportionate growth of middle management ranks, their subordinates.

This isn’t just a matter of cost. It is a matter of priorities – bolstering the core missions of teaching and research.

The current recession has led to a flattening of administrative structures and consolidation of functions in businesses and public institutions throughout the United States.

It must also extend to California’s public universities.

This means reviewing every job title. It means asking whether everyone needs their own information technology professional, whether faculty can expand their roles in administering research grants, whether regulatory compliance can be consolidated, whether the drive for student amenities unrelated to learning has gone too far.

At that point, as Richard Evans, a plant biologist at UC Davis, has put it: “We could argue convincingly to the governor and state Legislature that a well-run UC deserves full support. Perhaps most impressive, we could present a model for turning back a nationwide trend in university hiring.”

So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.

The problem, not too surprisingly, lies in the Senate, and mainly, though not entirely, with Republicans. The House has already passed a fairly strong reform bill, more or less along the lines proposed by the Obama administration, and the Senate could probably do the same if it operated on the principle of majority rule. But it doesn’t – and when you combine near-universal Republican opposition to serious reform with the wavering of some Democrats, prospects look bleak.

How did we get to this point? And should reform advocates accept the compromises that might yet produce some kind of bill? Many opponents of the House version of banking reform present their position as one of principle. House Republicans, offering their alternative proposal, claimed that they would end banking excesses by introducing “market discipline” – basically, by promising not to rescue banks in the future.

But that’s a fantasy. For one thing, governments always, when push comes to shove, end up rescuing key financial institutions in a crisis. And more broadly, relying on the magic of the market to keep banks safe has always been a path to disaster. Even Adam Smith knew that: He may have been the father of free-market economics, but he argued that bank regulation was as necessary as fire codes on urban buildings, and called for a ban on high-risk, high-interest lending, the 18th century version of subprime. And the lesson has been confirmed again and again, from the Panic of 1873 to Iceland today.

I suspect that even Republicans, in their hearts, understand the need for real reform. But their strategy of opposing anything the Obama administration proposes, coupled with the lure of financial-industry dollars – back in December top Republican leaders huddled with bank lobbyists to coordinate their campaigns against reform – have trumped all other considerations.

That said, some Republicans might, just possibly, be persuaded to sign on to a much-weakened version of reform – in particular, one that eliminates a key plank of the Obama administration’s proposals, the creation of a strong, independent agency protecting consumers. Should Democrats accept such a watered-down reform? I say no.

There are times when even a highly imperfect reform is much better than nothing; this is very much the case for health care.

But financial reform is different. An imperfect health care bill can be revised in the light of experience, and if Democrats pass the current plan there will be steady pressure to make it better. A weak financial reform, by contrast, wouldn’t be tested until the next big crisis. All it would do is create a false sense of security and a fig leaf for politicians opposed to any serious action – then fail in the clinch.

Better, then, to take a stand, and put the enemies of reform on the spot. And by all means let’s highlight the dispute over a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

There’s no question that consumers need much better protection.

The late Edward Gramlich – a Federal Reserve official who tried in vain to get Alan Greenspan to act against predatory lending – summarized the case perfectly back in 2007: “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself – the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”

Is it important that this protection be provided by an independent agency? It must be, or lobbyists wouldn’t be campaigning so hard to prevent that agency’s creation.

And it’s not hard to see why. Some have argued that the job of protecting consumers can and should be done either by the Fed or – as in one compromise that at this point seems unlikely – by a unit within the Treasury Department. But remember, not that long ago Greenspan was Fed chairman and John Snow was Treasury secretary.

Case closed. The only way consumers will be protected under future anti-regulation administrations – and believe me, given the power of the financial lobby, there will be such administrations – is if there’s an agency whose whole reason for being is to police bank abuses.

In summary, then, it’s time to draw a line in the sand. No reform, coupled with a campaign to name and shame the people responsible, is better than a cosmetic reform that just covers up failure to act.

California’s $6 million redistricting experiment was sold to voters as a system that would be free of politics, protect minority rights and provide accountability and transparency to a process in desperate need of reform. But judging by the first phase of the process, this costly scheme is turning out to be yet another example of budget-busting, ballot-box policymaking gone bad.

Although 30,720 applications were received from citizens to be on the redistricting panel (a number aided by an expensive, last-minute taxpayer-financed media blitz and an extended deadline), nearly 66 percent were from males. More than 71 percent were from white applicants. Meanwhile, just 10 percent were from Latinos (who represent 36 percent of the state’s population) and a mere 4.7 percent from Asians (who represent 12 percent of the state’s population).

These lackluster numbers come despite a taxpayer-funded $1.3 million consulting contract for an outreach campaign that included “barbershop and beauty salon outreach” to African Americans. Yet the final applicant pool hardly reflects the diversity of our citizenry. As California Democratic Party Vice Chairman Eric Bauman notes: “The final makeup of the Prop. 11 Redistricting Commission applicant pool looks like California in the 1950s.”

There also was heavily partisan and political involvement in beating the bushes for applications. Both the California Democratic Party and California Republican Party (as well as the Tea Party) urged partisans to apply. Local chapters of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association – via Craigslist – pleaded for applicants sympathetic to its conservative causes to throw their names into the hat. Legislators themselves made pitches on their Web sites.

Partisan politics played a major role in the recruitment process, which explains why the fastest-growing group of voters in the state is grossly unrepresented in the applicant pool. Decline-to-state applicants make up 12.9 percent of the applications, a far cry from the 20.2 percent of Californians who put themselves in that category.

Meanwhile, despite being outnumbered by Democrats by about 14 points in voter registration, Republicans had nearly the same number of applicants. (Democrats are already disadvantaged in the process, getting the same number of seats on the commission despite a huge registration advantage.)

Meanwhile, while the first phase of the screening process rejected 10 percent of the applicants, a number of politically connected big fish made it through the net. A quick review of some of the Sacramento area applicants includes: the CEO of the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce (who endorses candidates and has a PAC); the wife of a prominent Democratic political consultant; the executive director of the California Farm Bureau (which endorses candidates for the Legislature); and former GOP Assemblyman Larry Bowler.

So much for taking the politics out of the redistricting process.

Now what? Three auditors in a back room – unaccountable to voters or the Legislature – now will sift through the applications to get to a list of semifinalists.

The three – one Republican, one Democrat, and one decline-to-state voter – will whittle the applications down to 60 by Oct. 1. And in true “American Idol” fashion, applicants will get a final audition before the final commission is named. It will be interesting to see how many applicants will still be interested after learning that for a not-too-shabby $300 per day, they’ll have to reveal their assets, properties and gifts on the required FPPC forms.

Which brings us to the staggering costs of this experiment.

Despite voters being told in their ballot pamphlets that the cost would be $3 million, the state auditor recently went before the Legislature asking to double the appropriation to $6 million. She told legislators: “I think $3 million was certainly underestimating the amount of expenditures that were going to be necessary to carry this measure out.” Translation: Voters were misled.

At a time when children’s health care, education and mammograms for low-income women are being cut, Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Denise Ducheny was right to question the out-of-control costs of this untested process. Now it’s the voters’ turn.

There will be a measure on the November ballot to scrap this costly system that is paved with good intentions but fraught with problems and start again. Voters would be smart to take advantage of that opportunity to bring cost savings and accountability to the way legislative districts are carved.

For nearly half a century, California has balanced its explosive growth with a sensible, cost-effective program that protects a vital sector of our state economy – agriculture – and does it in a way that benefits all of us.

Today, that landmark law, known as the Williamson Act, is at risk.

Passed in 1965, the “California Land Conservation Act” expresses the state’s commitment to protecting vital food-producing farm and grazing land, along with the additional advantages such land provides: wildlife habitat preservation and watershed protection. Land conserved by the act can also act as a buffer against leapfrog development.

Under the law, farmers and ranchers who agree to keep land in agriculture and open space are permitted to pay taxes at a lower rate than the full market or development value.

The state then partially reimburses local government for the lost tax revenue. The contribution by the state is nominal – just a small fraction of 1 percent of the overall state budget – but the return is significant.

The question is, will the state this year see the soundness of this investment? In today’s highly competitive global economy, the law literally helps California farmers stay in business: It is said that one-third of California farms wouldn’t survive without the Williamson Act.

You don’t have to be a farmer or live in a rural area to reap the benefits. All of us enjoy the field-to-table products that farms provide. Open space also helps protect threatened and endangered species. In the Sacramento Valley, rice and corn fields provide some of the last roosting and foraging grounds for iconic migratory water birds like the greater sandhill crane.

The far-reaching impact of the Williamson Act on California agriculture and the state’s overall land-use planning is striking. A satellite image of California spotlighting the agricultural production would reveal millions of acres dispersed throughout the state.

More than two-thirds of this agricultural land – about 17 million acres – is protected and preserved by the Williamson Act. And this land “under the act” contributes significantly to the state’s coffers and the nation’s food supply, preserving California’s enviable role as the nation’s leader in agricultural output.

The fact is, the Williamson Act is one of the most effective on-the-ground tools to ensure that California’s land resources of today will be there for everyone’s future. This is especially true of agricultural land at the urban fringes in our state that are especially threatened by development.

Last year, the state essentially suspended its financial support of the Williamson Act. California should not make a similarly short-sighted decision this year, which would hasten the threat of losing the program altogether. The loss of the Williamson Act will be significant and far-reaching in local communities and across the state. Once gone, its positive impacts will be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate.

Today’s state budget crisis requires lawmakers to make some tough choices. Our counties face even more dire funding crises as a result of state funding cuts. Without Williamson Act “subvention” funding from the state, many counties will be forced to cut deeply into local public safety and health and human services programs.

Protecting California farmland and open space is too important to let unravel. We can ensure that won’t happen through an ongoing commitment to the Williamson Act. The state needs to keep this vital law “on the job” and working for all of California.

What can government officials do to help create jobs in California? To comment on this issue, please see our forum.

Californians like me like to brag that we stopped offshore oil from marring our gorgeous coastline, banned the dirtiest of fossil fuels – coal – from being burned within our state borders and halted the nuclear power industry in its tracks over the past few decades. Sacramento’s Rancho Seco, after all, was the first and only nuclear reactor to be shut down by a local ballot initiative, and I was among those who helped make that happen in 1989.

We’re awfully good at the “just say no” thing. However, we need to reinvent governance here in California, so we can get better at saying “yes” to the new green economy of the 21st century.

A bevy of statistics – and an enthusiastic Republican governor – weaves a great script that we are spawning the green economy of the future here in California. According to Next 10, a nonprofit San Francisco-based think tank, California green jobs grew by 36 percent between 1995 and 2008, while total jobs increased by only 13 percent. Between 2007 and 2008, total state employment fell 1 percent, but the green employment sector shot up 5 percent. Sacramento, interestingly enough, was the state leader in green job growth with an 87 percent growth rate between 1995 and 2008.

As a state, California has the most aggressive renewable energy policy goals in the land, yet all three of our large privately owned utilities – including Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – will not even come close to meeting state clean energy mandates of obtaining 20 percent of our power from carbon-free sources by the end of this year. How are we ever going to generate 33 percent of our power from these same renewables by 2020?

On paper, things always look good in California. A preliminary analysis provided by the Sacramento-based Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies shows that 11 solar, geothermal and wind projects in the permitting pipeline represent 4,712 megawatts of carbon-free electricity, enough power for more than 1.5 million homes. Government filings show these projects alone would contribute more than 8,500 jobs during the peak months of construction.

Unless we begin streamlining the permit approval process involving more than five major state agencies, and then federal and local governments as well, these jobs will disappear. Time is of the essence: The Obama administration’s federal loan guarantees and grants incorporated into its economic stimulus program go into effect only if construction begins by the end of this year, and many of these job-creating projects are contingent on this help from Uncle Sam.

As a renewable energy advocate, bird-watcher and avid wilderness hiker, I think we need to take some radical steps to resolve the ridiculous amounts of red tape stifling innovation and employment, while still protecting the natural beauty that has become the hallmark of this state. Therefore, the Legislature should:

• Amend outdated monopolistic utility regulations of electricity service to allow privately owned solar, wind and other smaller-scale renewable energy generation projects to directly sell their excess power to neighbors and communities, thereby maximizing local job creation.

• Consolidate planning and permitting of all power plants into a single state agency, instead of allowing a hodgepodge of federal, state and local jurisdictions to compete.

• Simplify clean energy mandates by eliminating arcane pricing proceedings and instead use a simple standing offer commonly known as a “feed-in tariff.” It was this contract arrangement that jump-started the renewable energy industry in California in the 1980s in the first place.

Permitting renewable energy projects in California under the current sets of rules can now take up to a decade. This is not acceptable given the economic and environmental challenges we face.

There is a small glimmer of hope under the rotunda. For example, SB 34X by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, would allow developers to pay a fee directly to the state Department of Fish and Game in lieu of having to directly purchase land to help mitigate impacts on endangered species on project sites, which would speed up the processing of some applications. There is also talk in Sacramento of figuring out ways to aggregate such mitigation efforts in regions featuring multiple large-scale renewable projects, such as the Interstate 10 corridor in Southern California, which may achieve both environmental economies of scale.

On the other hand, California’s green jobs are now being threatened at the federal level with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s new California Desert Protection Act of 2010, which takes 1 million acres of prime desert renewable energy basins “off the table.” This federal intervention has merit but still needs work. A nice amendment would be to offset any employment losses created by this federal legislation with equivalent new renewable energy capacity on nearby military reserves, thereby boosting national security, the economy and environment – all at the same time.

The governor should also mandate that all newly developed communities be completely energy self-sufficient by 2020. Until the state’s 33 percent renewable portfolio content is met, any new buildings would need to feature not only comprehensive energy efficiency upgrades, but also on-site clean power generation technologies.

Why not apply our 33 percent by 2020 carbon free energy mandate to our transportation fuels, too? After all, the biggest challenge facing California is weaning us off our addiction to freeways and cars, since 40 percent of our state’s carbon footprint comes from the transportation sector. Switching rapidly over to electric plug-in hybrids and sustainable biofuels also creates new green jobs here instead of shipping our dollars – and jobs – to oil suppliers overseas.

And while we’re at it, make suburban sprawl illegal and shift to concentrated infill and work/live communities. And let’s set aside the least environmentally damaging corridors for both electric mass transit and electric transmission lines, both vital infrastructure upgrades that are currently stuck in bureaucratic limbo.

Now, that bold agenda would be saying a big “yes” to the green economy of tomorrow.

Wind power blades near Suisun City show the state’s potential for generating carbon-free energy, but it can take up to a decade for big projects to gain approval.

Peter Asmus

What can government officials do to help create jobs in California? To comment on this issue, please see our forum.

California’s economic woes didn’t begin when the housing market imploded in 2008. It has taken years of increasingly punitive over-regulation to create the state’s hostile business environment, resulting in a disastrous loss of high wage jobs as manufacturers choose to grow in other locations. But if the legislative will is there, actions can be taken now to reverse the decline, spur new investments and add manufacturing jobs.

Although California’s manufacturing sector generates billions for the state in economic activity and tax revenue, the industry has been allowed to wither through neglect. Rather than nurturing innovation and enterprise, the Legislature has turned a blind eye toward initiatives that make us more competitive and adopted policies that raised business costs so high that California manufacturers have been priced out of the market.

For example, industrial electricity prices are nearly double those in our Western competitor states because utility costs for aggressive energy efficiency programs and ambitious renewable power goals are imposed on industry without regard for their impacts. These costs will go even higher when climate regulations go into effect.

Since 2001, our manufacturing base has declined 32 percent, costing the state more than 600,000 jobs and, according to the Milken Institute, $75 billion in lost wages and $5 billion in lost tax revenue from 2000 to 2007 – revenue and robust economic activity that could fix a lot of problems in this state.

Most lawmakers agree that manufacturing is important and California should be making the state more appealing for new investment and high-wage job growth. They know that for every manufacturing job, we get at least 2.5 more jobs in a multiplier effect that’s higher than any other industry sector. It’s a mystery why lawmakers are standing by, and even making the situation worse, while other states eat our lunch. The Milken Institute found that seven other states are either growing more or losing less high-tech manufacturing than we are. Those are companies born in California we’ve allowed to leave without a fight.

Many businesses have simply given up on California. Santa Clara-based Solaicx has decided to manufacture its silicon wafers for solar panels in Oregon. It’s become just too expensive and difficult to grow a business. In 2008, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council ranked California among the least friendly policy environments in the nation for entrepreneurship. When it comes to attracting and keeping businesses, California is consistently at the bottom of the heap. Chief Executive magazine has named California the worst state in the nation for jobs and business growth for the past four years.

California desperately needs a boost to reignite innovative industries such as biotech, aerospace, technology and other emerging sectors into the next generation of California manufacturers. There is a long way to go, but taking the first steps is not difficult or expensive. While California still has big advantages in its world-class universities and access to markets, its regulatory and tax environment is a man-made disaster.

To help revive our battered economy, California lawmakers should immediately address two challenges that are blocking our path to a robust and revitalized manufacturing sector.

The first challenge is that, for decades, the Legislature has imposed many California-only burdens without understanding impacts on manufacturing jobs. Other states don’t have restrictive meal-and-rest period rules and overtime laws, nor will they be joining a California cap-and-trade program to address climate change. Lawmakers should require fair and independent economic impact studies before adopting new California rules. Moreover, the Legislature should review regulations already on the books, and require periodic review going forward. This oversight will ensure that regulations on the books are working as intended and the Legislature can eliminate those that are ineffective, redundant or outdated. It’s time to clean house.

The Legislature’s second challenge is to change the “do not invest here” message caused by our California-only tax on our manufacturers. We should conform our tax policies to those of 47 other states and exempt the sales tax on manufacturing equipment purchases to ensure that manufacturers can compete. Studies show exponential economic activity and job growth as the result of the exemption. A Milken Institute study says the policy would result in 14,000 new manufacturing jobs and 50,000 overall jobs per year, over 10 years.

This is why states like Texas use the policy to reduce their tax burden and grow manufacturing. California is the only industrial state that levies a sales tax on the purchase of manufacturing equipment – a particular burden for new green businesses and established businesses looking to modernize their operations.

The Legislature has the power to take serious steps to reverse California’s economic decline. The time to take those steps is now. We can’t afford to wait.

Junius Brutus Stearns painting
Alas, the equivalent of this constitutional convention will not be coming here.

Let’s count the most appealing aspects of California state government. There are so many.

There is the perennial budget crisis, the antics of some lawmakers and the sway of the moneyed interests, not to mention the fundraising frenzies, the perpetual campaigns and the initiative wars.

Our state government is damaged, and it must be fixed if California is to thrive. That makes all the more troubling the apparent failure of two efforts that held out some promise of some change for the better.

A group called Repair California, backing initiatives calling for a California constitutional convention, has given up placing its measures on the 2010 general election ballot. A second group, California Forward, advocated a more modest overhaul of the state budget system. That, too, is on life-support.

People involved were well-intentioned and seemingly well-grounded in their understanding of California politics. Certainly, with institutions such as the Bay Area Council and individuals such as former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg involved, there was no lack of statewide campaign experience.

With each passing day, however, chances diminish that either group will be able to raise enough money to gather the millions of signatures needed to place the measures on the November ballot. That doesn’t mean that either is dead.

The Legislature could place the budget overhaul on the ballot. Perhaps candidates for state office would see some benefit to embracing true change, although that probably would not be a part of their consultants’ playbooks.

There’s still time, albeit measured in hours, for angels to shower down the millions it would take to place them on the ballot, either in 2010 or in a special election in 2011. The ideas could be retooled and reemerge on some future ballot.

But 2010 seems to be a year when the electorate will be most ready for change. Voters are unsettled and angry, rightly so. Unemployment is at 12.4 percent. The state, while not insolvent, is acting as if it were, and legislators are at loggerheads.

Ready or not, change does not seem to be headed to a ballot anytime soon.

Our movie-star governor came into office promising big change but has squandered the opportunities he once enjoyed to bring about significant reform.

The initiatives to overhaul the budget and create a constitutional convention were far from perfect. Despite claims by backers, there were doubts that a constitutional convention could be strictly limited to matters of governance.

The budget proposal is, if anything, too modest.

But that’s not why they faltered.

They faltered because reform is hard. It needs both broad-based grass-roots support and deep-pocketed benefactors. It needs people who care about the state’s broader interests, not just narrow ones such as preschool education, protecting Proposition 13 or passing water bonds.

In November, voters can look forward to the same tired batch of ballot measures masquerading as reform but limited in their ambitions. They will prove, once again, that much stronger and credible medicine is needed.

The word “partisanship” is typically accompanied by the word “mindless.” That’s not simply insulting to partisans; it’s also untrue.

If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic principles that lead to very different approaches to governing? Last week’s health care summit was a daylong seminar that should make it impossible for anyone to pretend otherwise. But before we get to that, let’s examine the Senate debate over whether to extend unemployment insurance coverage.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is holding a bill to extend unemployment benefits hostage to a cut in the estate tax. It’s an urgent issue for jobless workers because 1.1 million of them are scheduled to lose their benefits this month, and 2.7 million are slated to lose them by April.

But Kyl doesn’t want to let help to the unemployed go through until he can get a deal on estate tax relief that would cost $138 billion over the next decade, according to estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The estate tax has already been cut sharply, so the reduction Kyl is pushing along with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., would affect the estates of fewer than three out of every 1,000 people who die, according to the Tax Policy Center.

The proposal helps estates worth more than $7 million in the case of couples. I guess struggling millionaires deserve the same empathy we feel for those without a job.

And notice this: Especially in the Senate, what passes for “bipartisanship” too often involves a Democrat such as Lincoln allying with a Republican on behalf of the wealthiest interests in the country. And we’re supposed to cheer this? At the summit, the most revealing exchange was between President Barack Obama and Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who is also a physician.

Barrasso’s central concern is that the health care system doesn’t operate enough like every other market. He seemed troubled less by the many Americans who lack health insurance than by those who abuse the insurance they already have.

Addressing Obama, Barrasso suggested that we might be better off if people were insured only for catastrophic care. “Mr. President, when you say (people) with catastrophic plans, they don’t go for care until later, I say sometimes the people with catastrophic plans are the people that are (the) best consumers of health care in … the way they use their health care dollars.”

“A lot of people” with insurance, he added, “come in and say, my knee hurts, maybe I should get an MRI, they say, and then they say, will my insurance cover it? That’s the first question. And if I say yes, then they say, OK, let’s do it. If I say no, then they say, well, what will it … cost? And what’s it (going to) cost ought to be the first question. And that’s why sometimes people with … catastrophic health plans ask the best questions, shop around, are the best consumers of health care.”

Obama played the old TV character Columbo, who thrived on posing seemingly naive questions: “I just am curious. Would you be satisfied if every member of Congress just had catastrophic care? Do you think we’d be better health care purchasers?”

Barrasso answered in the affirmative, though he didn’t propose that senators dump their present coverage. Obama came right back: “Would you feel the same way if you were making $40,000 … because that’s the reality for a lot of folks. … They don’t fly into (the) Mayo (Clinic) and suddenly decide they’re going to spend a couple million dollars on the absolute, best health care. They’re folks who are left out.” Obama concluded: “We can debate whether or not we can afford to help them, but we shouldn’t pretend somehow that they don’t need help.” As neatly as anything I have seen, this exchange captured the philosophical and emotional difference between the two parties.

The point is not that Republicans are heartless and Democrats are compassionate. It’s that Democrats on the whole believe in using government to correct the inequities and inefficiencies the market creates, while Republicans on the whole think market outcomes are almost always better than anything government can produce.

That’s not cheap partisanship. It’s a fundamental divide. The paradox is that our understanding of politics would be more realistic if we were less cynical and came to see the battle for what it really is.

Goodwin Liu

It’s unlikely that anyone selected by the Obama administration for the appellate courts will have an easy time getting confirmed these days. And it may be even harder for someone with the dreaded label of “liberal” – such as Goodwin Liu, a professor and associate dean at Boalt Hall, the UC Berkeley law school.

Yet in selecting a judge for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, it is hard to image anyone who’s better qualified than Liu.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants who grew up in Sacramento – he’s a 1987 graduate of Rio Americano High School – Liu was a Rhodes scholar and clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Highly respected as a constitutional scholar with a long record of public service and as an expert on education finance, he’s also a winner of Berkeley’s highest teaching award and widely thought to be as accessible and open-minded as anyone in his field.

Liu, however, testified against the confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court and wrote an opinion piece warning that John Roberts, now the chief justice, would pull the court to the right. More, important, he authored a major study challenging constitutional “originalism” and other conservative doctrines.

Those analyses and opinions, part of Liu’s long paper trail of law review articles, legislative testimony and op-ed articles – the very things that define his distinction – also make him a handy target for those who would oppose anyone who’s not a fully certified conservative. Seven Obama nominees to appellate courts are already awaiting confirmation.

Yet Liu has supporters like Tom Campbell, now a Republican candidate for the Senate, and Clint Bolick, director of the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, a fully certified conservative, who described Liu as exhibiting “fresh, independent thinking and intellectual honesty.” Goodwin Liu would add luster to any court. He deserves to be confirmed.

At the intersection of the nanny state and the welfare state is a bill in the California Legislature that would make it easier for food stamp recipients to buy fruits and vegetables.

The idea is part nanny because government, having fulfilled its other responsibilities, has resolved to cut the fat by battling obesity.

And part welfare because our society continues to unintentionally harm the poor, the unemployed and the underemployed by assuring them that the world owes them a living. They’re also entitled to not feel embarrassed for being on public assistance, and thus to remove traces of stigma, are now given electronic cards rather than stamps to make their purchases.

The bill would require the nearly 650 farmers markets throughout California to accept food stamp cards by 2012, either by installing an electronic benefit transfer system or by allowing a third-party organization to set up and operate an EBT system.

Assemblyman Juan Arambula, an independent from Central California’s San Joaquin Valley, proposed the legislation last year to better serve the growing number of Californians using food stamps and to encourage healthy eating. I’ve known Arambula for 25 years. He’s a decent man, and he means well. But you have to look at the big picture, and this issue is more complicated than it seems.

Many farmers markets are cash-only businesses that operate in fields, sheds or parking lots that lack electricity. There are wireless card readers that could be used, but they can cost as much as $1,000.

And you wonder where California got its reputation for burdening businesses to the point where they jump the state line and flee to Nevada, Arizona, Colorado or Texas? Now you know.

Of course, it’s not just California. According to the Associated Press, lawmakers in Texas, Vermont, Indiana and other states have also proposed laws to make it easier for farmers markets to obtain and use these EBT machines in order to accept food stamps.

Sorry, I lost my place. Why are we going to all this trouble again? Oh yes, so people who receive food stamps can shop at farmers markets alongside other people who work to support their families, earn salaries and buy produce with hard-earned cash. After all, we are told by the bill’s supporters, having a lower income shouldn’t automatically lead to obesity and other health problems tied to poor nutrition.

Agreed. But does this mean that there are no fruits and vegetables to be found at the more than 20,000 supermarkets and grocery stores in California, most of which do take food stamps? No, in most cases, there are produce aisles in those places. It’s just that, we are told, the fruits and vegetables aren’t always as fresh as what you find at farmers markets.

I see. And this is an inconvenience for food stamp recipients? As much as it is an inconvenience for the rest of us to feed not only our own children but – through the country’s confiscatory tax system – someone else’s?

Not that I’m against feeding children. It’s a worthy cause. It’s just that I would hope that, in a perfect world, this responsibility would fall on the shoulders of those children’s parents and not the rest of society. I would also hope that, when parents drop the ball, we don’t encourage this conduct by picking up the slack.

If people in California or another state are so put off by not being able to shop at farmers markets, they might decide that they don’t like being on food stamps after all.

Good. Glad to hear it. You’re not supposed to like it. In fact, you’re supposed to dislike being on any form of public assistance so much that you can’t wait to get off. That way the system is temporary, and not something handed down from one generation to another. We made a mistake when we tried to remove the stigma from programs like this, and now we’re compounding that mistake by continually making it easier and more comfortable for people to become a permanent ward of the state.

In these dire economic times, many Californians worry about losing their jobs, homes or health insurance. But, if we confuse spreading compassion with fostering dependency, we should also be careful not to lose something that is just as important: our values.

David Brooks writes for the New York Times.

Going in, I was as cynical as everybody else about the Blair House health care forum. I was planning to watch for a half hour and then write about something else.

But the event was more meaningful than that. Most of the credit goes to President Barack Obama. The man really knows how to lead a discussion. He stuck to specifics and tried to rein in people who were flying off into generalities. He picked out the core point in any comment. He tried to keep things going in a coherent direction.

Moreover, he seemed to be trying to get a result. Republicans had their substantive criticism of the Democratic bills, but Obama kept pressing them for areas of agreement.

The second useful thing about the meeting was that it bypassed the congressional power structure. As usual, the quality of the comments got worse the closer you got to the party leadership. The Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, gave remarks that veered between the misleading and the incoherent. Statements from Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, were partisan spin. The Republican leaders, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, were smart enough to stand back and let Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee lead the way, which he did genially and intelligently. While Alexander was speaking, Reid and Pelosi wouldn’t even deign to look at him.

Once you got to the other members, about two-thirds of the statements were smart and well-informed. This was not a repeat of the Baltimore summit, in which Obama dominated the room. This time, Obama was very good, but so were many others, like Mike Enzi, Jim Cooper, George Miller and Tom Coburn. If you thought Republicans were a bunch of naysayers who don’t know or care about health care, then this was not the event for you. They more than held their own.

The third useful thing about Thursday’s forum was you got to see the Obama presidency encapsulated in one event. At the very end, the president summarized some possible points of agreement between the two parties, offered some concessions and asked Republicans to see if they could make some on their own.

As always with the Obama compromise offers, this offer seemed to be both sincere and insincere. Embodying the core contradiction of the Obama presidency, the president seemed both to want to craft a new package and also to defend the strictly Democratic approach. I think he’s a bipartisan man stuck in a partisan town, but maybe he’s an iron partisan fist in a velvet postpartisan glove.

Fourth, you got to see how confident Republicans are. Obama’s compromise offer is one the Republicans can happily refuse. In their eyes, he is saying: If you don’t make some concessions now, I’m going to punch myself in the face. If you don’t embrace parts of my bill, I will waste the next three months trying to push an unpopular measure through an ugly reconciliation process that will probably fail anyway.

Fifth, you got to see at least one area of bipartisan agreement. Neither side was willing to be specific about how to cut costs and raise revenue. The Republicans continued to demagogue efforts to restrain Medicare spending. The Democrats (and the Republicans) conveniently neglected to mention the fact that they had just gutted the long-term revenue source for their entire package, the excise tax on high-cost insurance plans. That tax was diluted and postponed until 2018. There is no way that members of a Congress eight years from now are going to accede to a $1 trillion tax increase to pay for a measure the 2010 Congress wasn’t brave enough to pay for itself.

Sixth, the summit illuminated one of the core mysteries of this whole debate: Are the two parties so fundamentally divided that there will never be any agreement, or is there at least the theoretical possibility of a compromise approach?

Both parties see the same problem. The current system is a mess, with opaque prices and perverse incentives that mostly favor the insurance companies. But, as Yuval Levin has pointed out in National Review, the Democrats believe the answer is to create a highly regulated insurance system with inefficiencies eliminated through rational rules. The Republicans believe that the answer is to create a genuine market with clear price signals, empowered consumers and an evolving process.

Philosophically, it is hard to bring these two sides together.

Health care reform will probably not get passed this year. But there were moments, at the most wonky and specific, when the two sides echoed each other – glimmers of hope for the next set of reformers.

Mayor Kevin Johnson, nothing if not ambitious, set the loftiest of goals in his second State of the City address: to make Sacramento the national leader in the green economy.

He is calling for a regional initiative to recruit clean energy companies and jobs. He wants Sacramento to be as synonymous with green energy as New York is with finance and Los Angeles is with entertainment. He describes a “green rush” – potentially as historic as the Gold Rush that put Sacramento on the map in the first place.

Frankly, we’d prefer if he dropped the “green rush” label. (It sounds like a medical marijuana dispensary.) Yet the mayor is onto something. Over the next few months, we look forward to Johnson assembling the brightest local thinkers on the green economy, rallying regional leaders and putting forward some specific proposals that go beyond platitudes.

Green energy holds a world of potential for homegrown jobs that would help strengthen and help diversify Sacramento’s economy beyond the housing industry and state government.

In the race to go green, however, Sacramento has a long way to go. It faces many competitors. While Johnson notes that the federal government is dangling funds for green tech initiatives, every other clean-energy mecca wannabe is also after the cash.

Johnson should find ways to build on the Sacramento region’s strengths. The University of California, Davis, is internationally recognized in energy innovation, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District is building one of the nation’s most advanced electricity networks.

One study released in December found that the Sacramento region led all California areas in percentage growth of green jobs from 1995 to 2008. Even with that 87 percent jump, however, Sacramento still trailed the Bay Area, which had three times as many green jobs and has a decided edge in raising money for startup companies.

The fate of the initiative hinges on the mayor’s leadership and more broad-based efforts to make Sacramento a cleaner, more sustainable city. We can’t be shipping our garbage over the Sierra to Nevada and expect to viewed as a green leader. Johnson’s agenda needs to go beyond mere employer recruitment to civic practices that will make Sacramento an attractive, environmentally savvy place to live.

Johnson says he has already reached out to City Council members and to leaders at UC Davis and California State University, Sacramento, and plans to collaborate with other officials around the region as well.

In the end, he’ll be judged not by his soaring vision as much as his stick-to-itiveness in making it reality.

Re “Internet poker breaks pact with tribes” (Viewpoints, Feb. 16): When I read the California Tribal Business Alliance’s recent commentary on Internet poker, I was reminded of a quote attributed to the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”

CTBA’s opinions are simply not supported by facts. The alliance distorts the truth when it comes to Internet poker.

Here are the facts. California is struggling with soaring deficits, and it is fiscally prudent to look at all options to bring in new revenue. Much like the gaming compacts that add millions of dollars to the state’s general fund, a legal, regulated and taxed intrastate Internet poker system would represent a new revenue stream legislators could count on annually.

No one knows the exact amount of revenue the state might receive from intrastate Internet poker, but we know a million Californians a week are playing poker on illegal Web sites housed offshore. Those games have no regulation and no consumer protections, and there’s no revenue going to the state.

CTBA wrongly contends that legalizing online poker in California would violate the tribal gambling compacts the state already has with California tribes. Morongo attorney George Forman, who has been involved in tribal issues for the last 40 years, clearly rebutted that contention at the Legislature’s Feb. 9 informational hearing on Internet poker.

Forman explained that the Legislature can allow Californians to play poker on their home computer or laptops without violating the state’s guarantee that tribes have the exclusive right to operate slot machines. Forman’s explanation matches that of a 2008 Legislative Counsel opinion.

The CTBA did not offer a contrary legal opinion to rebut the explanation provided by Forman and the Legislative Counsel, most likely because nothing in either the compacts or the law supports CTBA’s argument.

No one has ever suggested that an intrastate Internet poker system would close a $20 billion budget hole that California is facing. But budgets are built on many revenue streams that all flow into one place to pay for all the critical needs of Californians.

If a legalized, regulated and taxed system of intrastate Internet poker could provide one of these many revenue streams, California needs to give it serious consideration.

Time is of the essence. Every day we wait means millions of dollars in potential revenue that should stay in California leave California.

By calling California’s water shortage “the Central Valley water crisis,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein has attempted to delegitimize most of California, implying that Central Valley farmers have more right to water than the rest of the state.

Why are Central Valley jobs more important than Delta and Northern California jobs? Why are almond farmers more important than fishermen? Because they have more money?

Feinstein wants to “make technical modifications to the biological opinions that restrict Delta pumping.” In plain English, she wants to overrule the conclusions reached by scientists who have spent years studying salmon and the Delta. Feinstein calls ignoring scientific truth “a fair, short-term compromise,” but it will only be short term if the drought is really over, which is unlikely.

Our reservoirs are nowhere near full. Rain and snowfall totals so far are slightly above average, which is actually below normal for an El Niño event. Did you remember that we are having an El Niño event? California’s drought could last for years. Most of the scientific community believes we are in the first few years of a long-term dry-weather cycle. If so, Feinstein’s “short-term compromise” will prove as useless as it is destructive.

California salmon survived previous prolonged droughts. But they may go extinct during this one. Extinctions are the norm when politicians are allowed to ignore sound scientific opinion. That’s why the Endangered Species Act was passed.

The whole point was to force politicians to pay as much attention to long-term sustainability as they do to short-term profit. That being the case, it is not surprising that politicians are constantly trying to get around the Endangered Species Act, claiming that it is inflexible or even broken.

Feinstein says the 2003 New Mexico silvery minnow bill furnishes a precedent for her current attempt to circumvent the Endangered Species Act, but her claim is specious. The 2003 bill neither invalidated the biological opinion, nor provided an exemption to the ESA, so it bears little resemblance to Feinstein’s rider.

I am sorry that Central Valley farmers are hurting. I am sorry that lots of Californians are hurting. But I know that, in the long run, a California with salmon is better than a California without salmon. If you agree, you had better be prepared to start fighting for the water salmon need to survive. Because there are plenty of people fighting to take it away from them.

Peter Schrag

For nearly a decade, California Chief Justice Ron George has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of the state’s initiative process. At a conference at Stanford on state constitutions recently, he leveled what was probably his fiercest attack.

The initiative, he said, had placed the state and its lawmakers “in a fiscal straitjacket.” Often funded by deep-pockets interest groups that are the only entities with the resources to pay for the multimillion-dollar signature gathering campaigns required for qualifying a measure for the ballot, initiatives “have rendered state government dysfunctional.”

What he didn’t say is that the court itself has been sharply constrained – and sometimes intimidated – by ballot box populism.

George also pointed to the ease with which the state constitution can be amended. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black could slip the slim text of the federal Constitution into his pocket. That’s impossible with the California Constitution, which has been amended 500 times and is now 65,000 words long.

During the same election in 2008 that voters passed Proposition 8, overturning his court’s constitutional interpretation allowing gay couples to marry, George said, they also passed an amendment regulating the confinement of chickens. Thus “chickens gained valuable rights in California on the same day that gay men and lesbians lost them.”

Little of such criticism is new. It’s been made for decades by others. Neither was his reminder that California is the only state in the nation that, after a certain period of time, doesn’t allow legislative repeal or amendment of voter-approved initiatives. He was hardly the first to ask whether the initiative has “now become the tool of the very types of special interests it was intended to control, and an effective impediment to the effective functioning of a true democratic process.”

But he left out one obvious culprit: the California Supreme Court over which he presides. At least since 1978, when it upheld Proposition 13, the justices have ignored constitutional provisions requiring that voter initiatives be limited to amending, not revising, the state constitution.

If any measure was a revision, it was Proposition 13 which radically shifted authority from local governments to the state, changed majority control in the Legislature (on crucial matters like taxation) to supermajority rule and eviscerated home rule.

The same could be said for legislative term limits, which severely abridged the rights of voters to choose their representatives, and Proposition 8, which infringed on the rights of Californians on the basis of gender preference. On the gay marriage amendment, George, who in May 2008 had led the court in establishing a constitutional right to marriage, also wrote for the court’s 6-1 majority a year later in upholding the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which eliminated that right.

It’s understandable that the justices, who are subject to periodic reconfirmation and to recall, would be skittish about running afoul of voter backlash. Former state Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus observed many years ago that ruling on any hot button issue was like shaving with a crocodile in the bathtub. Try as you might, it’s hard to ignore.

But maybe in the course of George’s welcome ex-cathedra remarks, that dark fact and its distortion of constitutional government should at least be acknowledged. George has long recognized, as he did again at Stanford the other day, that the accumulation of initiatives, many of them poorly drafted and lacking any reliable legislative history, confound the work of the court.

In 2000, the court struck down a ballot measure on the grounds that it violated the constitution’s rule against initiatives covering more than a single subject. In what seemed to be a warning, the court said that the rule was “neither devoid of content nor as ‘toothless’ as some legal commentaries have suggested.” And it indicated that it might begin to subject the rule against revising the constitution by initiative to a broader interpretation as well.

But it has not happened, either with Proposition 8, which could have been read as a “revision” of the constitution’s equal protection provisions – in effect, the court more or less said that it followed the election returns – or with any anything else approved by the voters in recent decades.

In his Stanford talk, George strongly urged reform of the process. “If we fail to undertake such reform,” he said, “I am concerned we shall continue on a course of dysfunctional state government, characterized by a lack of accountability on the part of our officeholders as well as the voting public.” It’s good to hear him say it, but unless the court begins to say it as well, too few people may ever hear him.

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Sen. Byrd defends the filibuster

Planet Washington

Posted by David Lightman

Sen. Robert Byrd, the dean of the Senate who’s been serving since 1959, says colleagues should be willing to engage in lengthy filibusters.

Too often, the West Virginia Democrat said in a letter to colleagues Tuesday, efforts to dilute the filibuster’s impact are “grossly misguided.”

“If the Senate rules are being abused, it does not necessarily follow that the solution is to change the rules,” he said. He called “occasional abuse” of the filibuster rule “a painful side effect of what is otherwise the Senate’s greatest purpose – the right to extended, or even unlimited, debate.”

Sixty votes are needed to cut off debate, and Democratic leaders for the past 13 months have had to cut off filibusters, both real and threatened, on a wide variety of legislation.

Byrd said if a senator wants to filibuster, he or she should be ready to go to the Senate floor and talk, as lawmakers did years ago, “instead of finding less strenuous ways to accomplish the same end,” he said.

If they abuse the rules, he said, “and senators exhaust the patience of their colleagues, such actions can invite draconian measures. But those measures themselves can, in the long run, be as detrimental to the role of the institution and to the rights of the American people as the abuse of the rules.”

But remember, said Byrd, “extended deliberation and debate – when employed judiciously – protect every senator, and the interests of their constituency, and are essential to the protection of the liberties of a free people.”

What you thought about lawmakers is true

Planet Washington

Posted by Kevin Hall

Anyone who’s an avid watcher of C-SPAN or otherwise a follower of Congress got firm proof Wednesday of what most Americans have long suspected, that lawmakers speak before they think.

This proof came during a hearing in which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the House Financial Services Committee. Somewhere after the three-hour mark, Bernanke was greeted by Texas Democrat Rep. Al Green.

Green, a lawyer and second-term congressman from Houston, is given to long run-on questions and often asks some of the most pointed questions among committee members. But on Wednesday, as he welcomed Bernanke he warned that he was about to ramble on and there might not even be a question in there for the Fed chief.

Then he said something to the effect of, “I don’t know what I’m going to say until I’ve said it.”

Voila! Haven’t most of us thought that about our elected officials? And there’s the proof.