Fed up with the budget crises and partisan battles that have paralyzed California for years, some influential voices believe it’s time to tear open the state constitution and start anew.
Once dismissed as a hokey gimmick, support for a proposed constitutional convention has been building in the nation’s most populous state. Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would back an effort to retool the document to make state government function more smoothly.
As someone who moved to California from the Midwest, I would guess that most non Californians could care less about what happens here. It is a different world here than elsewhere but the Central Valley being primarily agricultural, is quite different than SoCal or the Bay Area in it’s politics. Thus, the first Diocese to exit TEC was from California.
Can’t they just pass an amendment to allow a budget to pass with a simple majority and not a super majority? From the tenor of the article, it sounds like that would be easier that a full blown constitutional convention.
#2, I like the supermajority budget requirement – otherwise, we would be even more highly taxed than we already are with more government waste. The Democratic party controls the state assembly, and the Unions (teachers and public employees) control the Democratic party here. The Republicans have forfeited their right to complain because they are complicit as well, but at least with the supermajority there are always a few Republican representatives who refuse to go along and try to keep things from getting too out of control. Southern California especially is really starting to turn into a third-world country – the middle class cannot afford to live here and is leaving in droves, so you’re left with the very wealthy (think Hollywood) and the very poor (think illegal immigrants). Not a good vision for the future.
“Can’t they just pass an amendment to allow a budget to pass with a simple majority and not a super majority? From the tenor of the article, it sounds like that would be easier that a full blown constitutional convention. ”
You try living downstream from that Home for the Criminally Insane (thank you, Mr. Twain!) that masquerades as a legislature up in Sacramento, and you’ll understand Why Not!
Here in Missouri, we have something called the “Hancock Amendment” that requires all tax/fee/rate/etc. increases to be put to a popular vote. That includes political subdivisions such as counties, cities, school districts, etc. As a result, even with the economic downturn, our government shortfalls are tending to be very limited and easily covered with fairly pain-free cost-cutting in areas that are, by any measure, considered optional expenditures. We’ve kept spending under control due to this Amendment.
California’s problem isn’t that it isn’t taxing enough (and the entire point of a constitutional convention would be to make taxing easier), it’s that the legislature has no restraint in its spending.
California also suffers from a legacy of many, many voter initiatives that mandate state spending on this or that program. The portion of the budget that the legislature has discretionary control over is surprisingly limited. Even if they were sincerely moved to cut spending (and, by the nature of the political game, they probably are not) they’d have difficulty doing it with so many mandatory expenditures littering the budget.
If California’s constitution is to change … an effort should be made to rid the state of voter initiatives.
To have proposed bond measures & tax increases put before the citizenry by the legislature is one thing … but to have “citizens’ groups” putting forth “special interests” initiatives … well that’s democracy run amuck.
What a pleasant thought … no more Proposition X promising — or threatening to withhold per Proposition 8 — this, that, and the other thing. Why California would be allowing the legislature to do the job its members are elected to perform.