Jun 23 2009

BUSTED

In short, it’s not a good time to be in California if you’re young. Or old. Or poor. Or sick.
by Clint Reilly

It is said that a hard-core drug addict needs to hit “rock bottom” before recovery is possible.

Life must become so hellish and circumstances so dire that they have no choice but to accept reality and begin to change.

For the sake of all Californians, I hope that the state has finally reached its own rock bottom moment.

“Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed. Our credit is dried up,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently told a joint session of the state legislature.

But even with the state tumbling toward fiscal oblivion, Californians continue to look for easy answers. Everyone wants to maintain crucial public services but no one wants to pay for them.

In many respects, the state of California today resembles an addict desperate for a fix. We are addicted to expediency and unrealistic expectations, and to prosperity without sacrifice.

After years of rampant borrowing, budgetary sleights of hand and collective finger crossing, it’s time to pay the piper.

Never mind the piper; we can’t even pay the teacher, the nurse, the policeman or the firefighter. The only way out of our $24 billion predicament, we’re told, is by taking a chainsaw to vital state services.

In short, this isn’t a good time to be in California if you’re young. Or old. Or poor. Or sick.

As the Golden State unravels beneath our feet, we should be doing more than blaming the legislature and the governor. There is plenty of blame to go around.

Instead, every Californian should be rallying for the fundamental structural reforms that this state so desperately needs.

But for this to happen, we need to wake up.
First, we have to decide what kind of society we wish to live in. If we decide that we want our children to be educated, our elderly to live with dignity, our sick cared for and our environment protected, then we must be willing to pay for it.

Whether we like it or not, this will require an honest reassessment of Prop 13, which contributes heavily to our boom-and-bust cycles by increasing the state’s dependence on wildly fluctuating income taxes.

We’ll also have to ask ourselves what the world’s seventh largest economy has in common with Rhode Island and Arkansas, the only two other states that require a super majority legislative vote to pass a budget.

As unappealing as it might be to do something nice for our state politicians, we need to reconsider the distorting effects of term limits on the legislative process as well.

We want our legislators to craft policies with long-term vision, but it’s difficult to take the long view when you’re working a short-term temp job, not to mention when you have no expertise and hardly know your colleagues.

Our initiative process should come under the microscope as well. Before our elected leaders even sit down to discuss the budget, the overwhelming majority of general fund spending is already set in stone thanks to the public initiative process.

Households and companies don’t operate this way because it’s insane. Why should the state of California?

These are just a handful of crucial reforms that we should consider if we are serious about putting the state back on solid ground. There are many more.

It is no longer useful or even rational for conservatives to scream about “big government” and for liberals to wring their hands about “draconian cuts.” Of course, our government could be more efficient. And obviously, service cuts inflict severe pain upon real people.

But unless we put the histrionics aside and agree that far reaching structural reforms are in everyone’s best interest, California will keep sliding backward, our most vulnerable citizens will experience untold misery, and our elected officials will continue to find new and creative ways to disappoint us.

Until we begin to demand more from ourselves, we will continue to receive less.