Everyone else is doing it, why not me? Actually I’m not going to do any such thing because I realize, unlike 99% of those offering advice, that the issue is very complicated and I don’t have enough information to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion. Instead, I thought it’d be more constructive to talk about what I do know and witness everyday at work and how that in its own way contributes to the gridlock in Sacramento.
California’s statutes fill up 4 book shelves and is a staggering 330 odd volumes. Each year the Senate and Assembly introduce over 2000 bills… I don’t think any single bill gets the attention and scrutiny it deserves before it ends up on the Governor’s desk. Instead of measuring success in terms of quantity of bills made into law, our elected officials could work on the quality of their legislation. There exists a Commission on Law Revision in California, this group needs to be amped up and tasked with going through the entire code, instead of a few pieces, and get rid of the dross and excess… The Constitutional Revision Commission needs to be reconstituted as well and tasked with cleaning-up California’s bloated state constitution, their recommendations then need to be heeded and acted on instead of being killed off by the State Legislature (which is what happened in the early ’90s.) If these two Commissions recreated in a truly bipartisan way and given broad enough powers to act I thin enacting their conclusions could go a long way to creating meaningful reform here in California.
I’ve watched countless policy committees meet, and every session of the Assembly and most of the Senate’s in the past two years. There is very little common ground between the two parties, Members here are so bent to one or the other ideology that, it seems, there is no point in listening to an alternative or opposing view because you’ve already know what is the best possible solution. Adhering to such hard ideological standards makes working with those who disagree with you impossible. It makes compromise impossible. It makes good politics impossible. It seems that the Republican or Democratic line is more of a religion and less of a viewpoint. There are no moderates or realists it seems in the California legislature.
I don’t see much political activism by regular people up here. In fact figures show that Californians as voters and citizens are some of the least active. In the absence of hearing from constituents, members only have their own staff and lobbyist groups to fall back to for commentary and input on bills, giving these groups a disproportionate power over legislation. Furthermore citizens don’t participate in the lobbyist groups they’re members of and so a small minority of teachers, state employees, etc.. control a vast amount of money and political clout that might not be wielded bluntly if these groups accurately reflected their make-up.
In short I think Sacramento is too radical and too ideological.
