The sun may be setting on the sunshine state. California narrowly averted a crisis with an 11th-hour budget compromise on February 19. Last Friday, on the same day Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency for a three-year drought, it was reported that the state unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold–one of the highest rates in the country. The state education system, once one of the best in the country, now ranks near the bottom.
Eighty-two percent of Californians believe their state is on the “wrong track,” and Schwarzenegger can boast of a disapproval rating that rivals George W. Bush’s in his final year in office. Apparently, some Californians have had enough. They’re ready to start from scratch–with a new state constitution.
On February 24, several good government groups met in Sacramento to discuss various proposals and new polling that seems to indicate that voters are cautiously supportive of a constitutional convention. Two days later, the Los Angeles Times reported that Schwarzenegger himself supports a constitutional convention.
While the state’s problems are legion, the cause of many of them is connected to the polarization of the state’s legislature. Though political parties are weak in California, the legislative districts are gerrymandered in such a way that almost every one of them is heavily Democratic or heavily Republican (but mostly Democratic, of course). Candidates usually need only to appeal to the most liberal or most conservative elements of their district in order to win the primary and, almost by default, the general election.
This has produced a state legislature that is considerably more liberal than the average voter. In the rare circumstances that require a supermajority vote, such as the recent vote to approve a new budget, the inability of far right Republicans and far left Democrats to compromise has the potential to bring the state to a standstill.
Under the current constitutional framework, a two-thirds vote of the state legislature and a majority vote of the state’s electorate is necessary to call for a constitutional convention. Since it is highly unlikely that the current batch of politicians in Sacramento will call for a convention that aims to replace them with more moderate members, pro-convention groups plan to use the initiative process to call for a constitutional convention. One initiative will give voters the authority to call for a constitutional convention by a majority vote, and its twin initiative would call for a convention.
The Bay Area Council, the business group leading the charge for a constitutional convention, has floated several ideas for potential constitutional reforms. They’d like to change the two-thirds threshold to a 55 percent majority for budget approval, which would have prevented this year’s budget crisis. John Grubb, a spokesman for the council, told me that they would only support the change if the constitution included spending limits on the legislature. The Bay Area Council would also like the legislature to approve the budget in two-year cycles, with the legislature meeting every other year to focus only on policymaking.
Another major reform that they would like to see is a sunset commission for state bureaucratic institutions. This reform would be modeled after a Texas provision that sunsets every statewide board after 12 years unless the legislature takes action. In California, new boards and commissions hardly ever go away, which has created a giant state bureaucracy.
In 2008, Californians very narrowly approved Proposition 11, which severely curtails the power of California’s politicians to define legislative district boundaries. A citizens’ commission will now approve boundary decisions, with required approval from some of the Democratic, Republican, and nonpartisan members of the commission. The benefits of this ballot initiative will kick in after the 2010 Census and should fix most of the structural problems caused by political gerrymandering in California.
Nevertheless, some of the reformers would like to make a constitutional provision for an open primary, where the top two vote getters in the primary election face off in a general election, even if they’re from the same party.
As part of the budget compromise, Schwarzenegger actually promised Republican state senator Abel Maldonado that voters will have a chance to approve an open-primary on the June 2010 ballot. A referendum on the open primary may have the effect of slowing the momentum for a constitutional convention in favor of more piecemeal reforms–the same thing that got California into the mess it’s in today.
However, it seems as though Proposition 11 may already fix many of the problems that the open primary would fix, once it goes into effect. In fact, an open primary has the potential to do harm by eroding the power of the political parties in California. While this may sound like a nice thing to a people who are clamoring for “post-partisanship,” the ability of parties to nurture the loyalty of politicians to an interest apart from themselves is a good that cannot be easily replicated.
An open primary is a reach back to the same progressive-era ideas that led to the initiative system. Although originally instituted in 1911 to break the power of special interests, the initiative process in California has become almost a parody of itself. The state usually has one of the longest ballots in the country and routinely asks voters to decide complicated policy questions upon which they have no claim to expertise.
Nonetheless, the state’s voters remain wedded to the initiative process, though modern-day progressives may have some new doubts about the system due to its use this past November in restricting the authority of the state courts to enact same-sex marriage. While no one is advocating a complete reversal on California’s direct democracy project, some of the good government groups want to rein in the initiative process. According to California Common Cause executive director Kathay Feng, her group plans to support some kind of intermediary initiative process that would involve oversight of initiatives once they gather enough signatures. They hope to stop the initiative from being used to circumvent the legislative process, and they’d like to make sure that the expensive and time-limited signature-gathering process doesn’t restrict initiatives to wealthy interests.
Schwarzenegger, for his part, would like to see a new constitution end legislative term limits and turn most elected state officers into gubernatorial appointments. Schwarzenegger told the Los Angeles Times that “it makes no sense that the governor is surrounded by constitutional officers who are trying to derail him.” He’s right.
Even though the reforms in a new state constitution may have big drawbacks, almost any change would be good for malgoverned California. Some reforms, such as an open primary, might cause problems down the road, but others could break the liberal hold on the legislature and curb the excesses of California’s direct democracy. In any case, reformers can take advantage of widespread public discontent. They should take a page from White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and refuse to let this severe crisis go to waste.
Kevin Vance, a Collegiate Network fellow, is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
