If they really intend to tackle California's problems at their roots, our gubernatorial candidates (and any others seeking public office) should read these recently published books. They should provide a helpful antidote to anyone tempted to put forward simplistic solutions to California's multiple problems – and to come up with some original ideas to move California forward.
1. California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press), by Joe Mathews and Mark Paul.
"What is the worst thing about California's current fix?" is the opening sentence in this readable book that could be easily perused by candidates on long campaign bus drives or quick plane hops across the state. It's not the decline of our "once great public schools." It's not the "endless cycle of elections that never seems to leave time for governance." It's "not even the multi-billion-dollar state budget deficits, and the never-ending cycles of budget cuts that ensue."
No, write Mathews and Paul. "The worst thing is that, under the state's current system of government, these problems can't be fixed." They then proceed to outline a roadmap to repair our governance system in California – including ideas like turning our two-chamber Legislature into one chamber, instant runoff voting, and European-style proportional representation. None of these have much chance of happening. Others, like requiring any voter initiative to go through the same scrutiny as legislation before it gets placed on the ballot, seem within the realm of possibility. Regardless, these ideas make you think in fresh ways about "reform" in California.
2. Remaking California: Reclaiming the Public Good (Heyday Books), edited by R. Jeffrey Lustig, with contributions from Dan Walters, John Vasconcellos and other longtime observers, and participants, in California's political wars.
If read carefully, this book could scare away anyone contemplating running for office – too late for those who have already taken the plunge – because it outlines the extraordinary layers of complexities that have tangled our political system in knots. California's problems are "structural, not reparable by piecemeal solutions," writes Lustig, a professor at CSU Sacramento, in the book's opening pages. You may not agree with their conclusions, but several of the essays, including Lenny Goldberg's on Prop. 13, are essential reading for anyone trying to understand how California got into the mess it is in today.
3. California's Golden Years: When Government Worked and Why, by Bill Bagley, the moderate Republican assemblyman who was in the state Legislature from 1960 to 1974. The conversational tone of this volume, published by UC Berkeley's Public Policy Press, reflects the breezy personality of its author, a moderate Republican who was actually able to work collaboratively with his Democratic colleagues.
I got to know Bagley when he was on the UC Board of Regents, and I was covering the university for the San Francisco Chronicle in the early 1990s. Bagley says that one of the reasons meaningful bipartisanship has disappeared from Sacramento is that legislators don't know each other, which he blames in part on term limits and in part on the emergence of powerful Democratic and Republican caucuses which effectively dictate to lawmakers how they should vote. "Out of 120 legislators, there were only 4 or 5 hardline right-wingers, and we didn't pay attention to them," he told me this week. When he was in Sacramento, lobbyists invited Republicans and Democrats together to dinners, where they were able to bond. But Prop. 9 approved by voters in 1974 limited lobbyist spending to $10 a month per member, which effectively ended lobbyist-hosted meals, further undermining bipartisan governance in California. So much for "reform," Bagley said.
It's not a simple question of "can't we all get along," says Bagley. Real structural reforms will be required – modifying term limits, open primaries – to bring moderation and bipartisanship back to Sacramento. But reading Bagley's book is at least a reminder that bipartisanship did once flourish in California, and it should be possible to reclaim it again.
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