Cali-sized Opportunity Costs

In the wake of a crisis-induced budget deal endorsed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and passed Friday by a Democratic-controlled Legislature, Californians can look forward to drastic cuts in higher education enrollment and increased student fees and tuition, significant reductions in health coverage for the working poor, an end to cost-of-living increases for government workers and teachers, elimination of state support for immunization programs, reduction of welfare payments, and the closure of as many as 50 state parks.

California, meet opportunity costs. This is price paid for all of the overspending of the last few decades, including such goodies as overpaid prison guards, bloated bureaucracies, gerrymandering, fat teacher contracts with all kinds of time off and protection for the worst teachers. It is sad and shameful.

Lou Cannon calls it the "Dimming of the Dream" but isn't really rather the "End of the Illusion." The situtation reminds me of Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." He concludes his piece with a yearning for leadership. Odd, since it was the reform movement that instituted term limits in California. There are no long-term leaders in the Golden State, just temps.

What California may need more than anything is leadership -- of the kind that Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson provided as governors and that legendary Assembly speaker Jesse Unruh as well as Moretti and Willie Brown brought to the Legislature. That at least is the opinion of longtime lobbyist Steffes, who was legislative liaison for Reagan and a constructive participant in the welfare-reform bill negotiated with Moretti. "Reagan and Moretti and all the others had plenty of flaws, but they came to Sacramento to do something," said Steffes. "Where are the leaders now? Who is willing to say I'll risk my office for something I believe in?"

 

The answer to these questions may be that California's leaders are gone -- and with them the dream that made this state such a special place.

Comments

[Asa Hopkins]

It's not just overspending -- it's also the complete inability to raise revenue (and the failure of the federal stimulus bill to include substantial help for states, thanks to the "moderates" who trimmed that out of the bill). Prop 13's treatment of commercial property, which has resulted in residential property taxes bearing all the load (instead of sharing it with commercial property), which can't be fixed without 2/3 support or a ballot measure, is a key cause.

[Tim Kane]

Fair point, Asa. But I remain in the camp that thinks the CA has more than enough tax revenue per capita, one if the highest levels of any state. Why would they need more per capita revenue than Florida or New York? I might buy the revenue argument if CA had lower revenues than most other states.

[replica watches]

The battle of ideas is not won or lost in Congress, or even in elections, but in the long assessment of history. Just ask Qeng Ho