Money & Politics | Daily Report

This has not been a good month – or week – for Californians hoping that any number of reforms will lead the state out of its current political and fiscal morass.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Bay Area Council's Repair California, the major group promoting the idea of a constitutional convention to rewrite California's Byzantine, conflicting and often counterproductive constitution, announced that it was suspending its campaign, at least for now, because it hasn't come close to raising the funds it needs to put the required initiatives on the ballot. 

That left the ball in the court of the other major California reform organization, California Forward, which has adopted a strategy of tackling reform piece by piece.

But according to the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert, California Forward is also struggling to find money to put two reform initiatives on the ballot, including lowering the two-thirds vote currently required to approve a budget in the State Legislature.

Nearly 700,000 signatures would have to be raised between now and mid May, according to Capitol Alert, and that process hasn't even started. California Forward's co-chair, Bob Hertzberg, an old California pro, is also trying to convince the Legislature to approve his organization's reform proposals. Good luck on that.

Perhaps most disturbing to the pro-reform camp are the latest results of the Field Poll released this week, which shows that even if these initiatives made it on to the ballot, backers would face a substantial struggle to convince voters to approve them.

Despite California's overwhelming problems, 75 percent of likely voters say they don't believe fundamental constitutional change is necessary "if lawmakers work together." A mere 20 percent think that fundamental constitutional change is needed.

Likely voters also favor making it more difficult to approve constitutional changes once on the ballot by changing the current requirement from a simple majority to a two-thirds majority.

Reform advocates can take some comfort in the Field Poll poll results that show that while likely voters still oppose lowering the two-thirds vote requirement for approving a budget, they do so by only a small margin – suggesting that a well run campaign might succeed at least in changing voters' minds on this issue.

But at the moment, fixes – quick or otherwise – to California's problems, seem frustratingly elusive, despite all the recent energy in trying to make something happen.