What is the May 19th Special Election really all about? Power.
While television ads, political mailings and news coverage of the state’s seemingly never-ending budget battles would lead a person to believe that the election is about ratifying a $40 billion solution to California’s budget problems, it is not that simple.
The actual battle is between two irreconcilable belief systems concerning the roles and functions of state government: Republican and Democratic.
The Democratic belief system holds that state government is, in many ways, the great social elevator. This belief system says that state government exists to accomplish a couple of major objectives. First, to provide some financial relief to those who are not winners in the prevailing economic system. Second, to have robust programs of public education, health and human services, and corrections so that virtually everyone, regardless of where they start in life, will have a chance (or even a second or third chance) to succeed. Democrats believe, for example, that public schools need serious infusions of public money in order to be more successful (California is dead last in per pupil spending among the 50 states).
The Republican belief system tells us that state government is mostly an assemblage of social experiments and engineering that, on the whole, provides little real opportunity and diverts funds from the private sector, which is much better at providing real, market-responsive opportunities for motivated people. Republicans believe, again for example, that the government schools (their words) are the hostages of teachers unions, and that throwing more money at the problem is wasteful. They would prefer to inject competition into the education equation through, among other methods, the legalization of vouchers.
In the venue of the California Legislature, these two belief systems battle day and night, and never more so than during the deliberations and maneuvering that lead to the adoption of the state’s annual budget.
On the natural, given that California is a Democratic state, it would seem that while the battles take place, Democrats should win the war of ideas and belief systems. Much of the time that is true. California has, for many decades, had significantly more voters registered with the Democratic Party than Republican. The composition of the state Legislature reflects that partisan fact. Democrats maintain substantial majorities in both the state Assembly and Senate. However, California’s extremely lengthy and often amended Constitution provides a few elements that re-grade the policy-making playing field, the effects of which are to increase the power of the minority party beyond either their number in the electorate at-large or in either house of the Legislature. Chief among such elements is the requirement that two-thirds of the membership of the state Assembly and state Senate must vote in the affirmative in order for the state budget to be adopted and sent to the Governor. In 47 of the 50 states in the Union, a simple majority vote sends the state’s budget to the Governor. Only California, Rhode Island and Arkansas have a super-majority vote requirement for this legislative action. In other words, if you live in Indiana, Republicans control both houses of the Indiana legislature, and they produce a Republic-values budget. If you live in Vermont, where Democrats have majorities, the Vermont legislature produces a Democratic-values budget.
Add to this mix the impacts of redistricting of state Assembly and Senate seats. In 2001, following the 2000 national census, the Democratic and Republican leadership agreed on a plan that the then-Speaker of the Assembly characterized as “an incumbent protection plan.” While redistricting should consider changes in population, adherence to the Voting Rights Act, and respect for “communities of interest,” the 2001 plan considered incumbent protection, incumbent protection and incumbent protection. The result of such a redistricting exercise has been a legislature which is composed largely of Democrats who are a bit to the left of the state’s Democrats and Republicans who are somewhat to the right of their party’s rank-and-file members. (The good news here is that voters, by a narrow margin, approved Proposition 11 on the November 2008 statewide ballot. This amended the state Constitution to take legislative redistricting out of the hands of legislators—who clearly had a political conflict of interest in drawing legislative district lines—and put that responsibility in the hands of an independent commission.)
Some might argue that this is not so bad. Given that the state is composed of Democrats, Republicans, a large segment (nearly 20 percent) of Decline to State voters, and a smattering of voters aligned with so-called third parties, the budget should also reflect such diversity. Instead, this is where the system simply breaks down and produces a budget product that is, to put it mildly, unsatisfactory to virtually everyone.
If the budget exercise was, in large part, an effort to reach a principled compromise, without any legislator being asked to compromise their principles, then a rather value-balanced budget could at least be sought, and often achieved. Such is not the case.
Let’s examine the 2008-09 and 2009-10 Fiscal Year budget battles. With the world economy auguring into recession beginning in late 2007, the State of California’s fiscal condition went from a case of the sniffles to a serious cold to pneumonia in a matter of a few brief months. Rosy revenue projections and underestimated caseloads in public education, health and human services and criminal justice caused a yawning deficit. After months of principled disagreement mixed with extremely rough-edged partisan political battling, a very fragile deal was reached. A deal that caused the state Senate Republican Caucus to throw their leader off the political cliff and the state Republican Party to withhold political and financial support next year for any Republican legislator who had voted for the budget. Why? Because the Republican belief system had been violated when a handful of Republicans voted for a budget that contained tax increases? Sort of; however, that is not the core reason.
The core reason that Republicans are in an uproar about the adopted budget is that they were on the verge of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically change the architecture of California government. They blame the few “Yes on the Budget” Republicans for ending the budget game too early.
In February, when the budget was adopted with $15 billion in tax increases, $15 billion in program cuts and a few billon dollars in borrowing, the vast majority of Republican legislators let out a collective cry of frustration. If the budget battles had gone on for a mere two or three more weeks, the State of California would have run out of cash, the State’s borrowing capacity would have been severely limited and massive lay-offs of public employees at both the state and county levels would have ensued. The only solution then, according to Republican legislators, would have been to reengineer California government. That reengineering would have included at least major restructuring of public education and corrections/prisons.
With respect to public education (or, as many Republican legislators call it, “the government schools”), the Republican solution would have been to advance a massive program of school vouchers. Vouchers, in principle, would allow parents or guardians of school-aged children to take their “per pupil funds” to a public or private school of their choosing, thus, in their view, creating competition for those vouchers. This market-based idea holds that both public and private schools would strive for educational excellence as a way to attract parents who are shopping around for their child’s best chance at a good education. (The counter argument, in part, is that such a system would leave the public schools with the responsibility to educate special needs students, non-English speaking students, children with a wide variety of challenges such as poverty, health problems, nutrition deficiencies and few funds with which to meet such needs.)
Regarding prisons, it is the long-held belief of most Republican legislators that the real failure of the so-called corrections system to correct much of anything is the result of an enormously strong prison guard union (the California Correctional Peace Officers Association) that has the power to reject any real reforms. This is not an entirely specious argument, although how to solve the problems of the corrections system is not, at this time, ripe with consensus. The Republican solution is to, once again, inject competition through contracting out prison operations and management to the private sector (think here of the Corrections Corporation of America).
These are but two examples of how Republican legislators see a better future. A future where private sector principles of management and competition are applied to public sector functions. This is, essentially, a dismantling of California government as we have come to know it.
The May 19, 2009 Special Election will result in the failure of all measures except for the last measure on the ballot that prohibits legislators from receiving a salary increase in years where the budget is in deficit. When those measures fail, and Governor Schwarznegger announces that the budget deficit is nearly $20 billion, Republican legislators will once again have the chance to reengineer California’s state government. This time, however, there will be no Republican “Yes” votes for tax increases. There will be no compromise on a balanced package of solutions. Republicans will argue, somewhat incorrectly, that the message from the electorate is that voters want the problem solved through cuts and restructuring of the fundamentals of government. This will be a battle to the death of two irreconcilable belief systems.
All but the legislators’ pay measure will fail. Democrats will either have to offer real reform of the governance process or face the real possibility that a minority within a minority political party will prevail.
Non-partisan budget reforms are at hand and can assist in solving this dilemma. Together with Santa Cruz’s own former Republican Assembly member, state senator and secretary of state, Bruce McPherson, I serve on the board of directors of California Forward. This non-partisan group is advancing a package of reforms that we believe will allow California to modernize the tools for policy-makers to propose, debate and adopt an annual California State Budget that reflects the hopes and aspirations of California’s majority of Democrats, independents, and many Republicans.
In short, the reforms would include two-year budgeting, increased oversight and accountability for program effectiveness and spending, a “lock box” for revenue surpluses that could only be used to reduce or avoid deficits and a change in the vote threshold for approving the budget. On this last point, the California Forward board is still debating the proper reform. My view is that the two-thirds vote requirement should be reduced to 55 percent unless the majority party has not produced and sent to the Governor a balanced budget by June 15th each year. Failure of the majority party to accomplish that important task by that time would result in a triggering up of the vote threshold on June 16th to two-thirds. In other words, like in 47 other states, the majority must assume the responsibility to get the job done.
Additional reforms of term-limits, the initiative process and campaign financing must also be enacted. California Forward is working on each, in conjunction with a broad coalition of like-minded civic reform organizations throughout California.
While I support the May 19th ballot measures, I do so believing that they are the best bad package we have. When they fail, we must on May 20th be prepared to advance a comprehensive package of governance reforms that will provide modern tools for governance in the 21st century. – Fred Keeley
Fred Keeley is the elected Treasurer of Santa Cruz County; an appointee of the state Senate to the Governor’s Commission on the 21st Century Economy; a member of the board of directors of California Forward; and a former state Assembly Member representing the Monterey Bay area.
