How Can We Repair California?

Joe Mathews, a fourth-generation Californian and frequent Zócalo moderator, joined forces with his fellow New America Foundation scholar Mark Paul to write California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It. “We’re colleagues, but we’re very different people. We’re from different ends of the state. He’s a baby boomer and I’m not. He has worked in government and politics, and I would never do that in a million years. He’s definitely a liberal, I’m not,” Mathews said. “But we both had this incredible shared frustration with the state of conversation and action about good government and reform.” Below, Mathews chats with Zócalo about why the state is broken, what Schwarzenegger has done about it, why Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown aren’t helping, and how to get out of the mess.

Q. How did we get into this mess, and are we doing anything right?

California Crackup, by Joe Mathews and Mark PaulA. I think we make pretty good policy in some areas that involve majority votes in the legislation. We’re actually representing the people of California in those areas. We do things in a timely manner, and if things get screwed up, it’s clear who messed up and they can be held accountable. That’s not too terrible.

But our problems started in 1849, in the sense that we didn’t have a real founding. We had this very strange beginning of the state that no other state had. It’s the curse of bigness and suddenness. We were this big place, we were far away, and we went from nothing to the whole world showing up because we had a gold rush. We were immediately a state without going through any of the processes. We had a constitution but it was worthless. We’ve never gotten it right. Californians have never been people who have engaged in their government. We do things in hurried, improvised, angry spasms. We’ve always gotten away with it because we’re bigger and faster-growing and better looking than everybody else. We could get away with it because the state changed so fast, and so much wealth was coming in. We would have a bust, and people would talk about fixing things in a real way, but before we figured out how, the new boom was on, so who cared? We’ve had this 160-year adolescence.

This is the moment – and by moment, I mean 20-year period – where we have to have a real founding. We are no longer a state of arrival. We’re a state where most people arrive in maternity wards, though many people still come here and many people leave here. It’s very significant that California is finally a place where most people are from here. We’re not going to be bailed out by some new arrival of wealth. We have to educate our own people. We have to find a new generation of homebuyers well-off enough to buy the homes of people retiring.

It’s not going to change our character. We will always be a big, diverse, crazy place with crazy politics doing things that make the rest of the world scratch their heads. We just need to do all that in a democratic way, making sure that people doing crazy things can be held accountable, and allowing us to make decisions and balance budgets in a timely fashion. But we haven’t reckoned with things. We’re stuck.

Q. What got us stuck with this system?

A. We passed Proposition 13, which centralized authority for a really big, diverse state in a small number of people in Sacramento. Then, through a series of measures passed on top of that, we created this system that limited options for the handful of people that we gave all the power to. We put a small number of people in charge of money and taxation and spending, and then tied their hands behind their backs. We’ve created this kind of ratchet, as we call it in the book, on any matter that involves money. It’s a system that can’t really be operated by anybody.

There’s an aspect of this that fits in with the larger conversation in the country of being “too big to fail.” It’s clear now that with banks and some other institutions, when they get so big, it’s hard to run them. If those people screw up, it can create all sorts of problems for all sorts of folks in a way that isn’t fair. It creates an unacceptable level of risk. The argument for breaking up big banks is that it spreads risk.

California has the same problem. By centralizing, by robbing people of control and making it hard to govern, we’ve created an unacceptable level of risk. We need to restore local control of taxation and spending. There will always be some Maywoods – some places that screw up. But you need to spread the risk around. It would be much better for the state, and for the people who manage their lives and cities wisely.

Q. How do voters and elected officials relate to each other? Why would Californians vote to give more authority to politicians they otherwise seem to want to restrain?

A. Well, Proposition 13 didn’t say, “Let’s make Sacramento the center of all fiscal authority,” so there was no real vote for that. People warned that it was going to happen.

But there is this mutual cycle of contempt. Voters don’t trust politicians, whether local or state, so they try to tie the hands of politicians. That’s what Prop. 13 was all about. That’s how it was sold. And it tied the hands of local folks who set property tax rates. But when the state got that power, we tied their hands – you can’t touch this spending, you can’t touch this tax.

So what the folks in power spend time doing is trying to subvert and get around the restrictions we’ve put on them. they find it harder and harder to do, and they end up doing things people don’t like – backdoor fees and tax increases. And that makes everyone more mad, and we impose more restrictions. That’s the cycle we live with. It needs to stop.

Part of this happens because of the way the media approach the California story. The message is always: You’re getting screwed. That narrative needs to be replaced with a big full-length mirror that says, “Maybe you’re being screwed, but nowhere near as much as you’ve screwed yourself.” Once people understand that, then reform will come more easily. I think you’re talking about a 10 to 20 year process of public opinion being changed and actual action taken. And then in 20 years they’ll say, “Twenty years ago there was that book that started it all….”

Q. Have we begun that process, and if so, how far along are we?

A. I think you’ve seen the beginning of it with the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and the vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger would never say this, because his persona is built on this idea that everything is possible, but ultimately what he said to us in three separate elections is that the current system doesn’t allow him to legislate or govern in any sane way. He’s been saying that for seven years. He’s been trying different ways to say it and to fix it, and he has the advantage of being right.

The good government people have been working for years, too, to push for redistricting and an open primary. The effort to get a constitutional convention, even if it failed, is the beginning. Mark and I disagree with the California Forward people on some of their prescriptions, but what they’re doing right is building an interest group, something long-term to fight for the system. We need a real, sustainable public opinion campaign.

The best people at that is the California Teachers Association. They’re always on air talking in messages even when there is no political issue they’re working on. You hear from them when school starts – they’re talking about teachers, about giving them better pay and more freedom. Over the course of doing this they really have changed public opinion. Proposition 98, which they see as a very important thing and I think has been a disaster, passed with 50 percent of the vote but today something like 70 percent of people support it.

They’ve moved public opinion, and there needs to be the same effort with the state as a whole. We’ve created this political system and our elected officials are scapegoats. They do a great job being scapegoats – they’re awful, as any good scapegoat should be. But we need a broad public education campaign. For instance, people think most of the budget is spent on prisons and not on education, and that’s just not the case. Right now, our messaging is small and indirect. We need a lot of money and  a lot of time and a lot of smart campaigns. Maybe then, in ten years, you can go and have a constitutional convention or a revision conversation. Then you just have to hope the changes are the right ones. This is a really opportune moment and I wish people were doing more. This book is our effort to do something. There’s a moment when everyone knows something’s wrong and everyone’s paying attention. They may not show up to vote, but they’re paying attention. Now’s the moment to explain what’s going on.

I don’t think the people running for office right now are helping with this, unfortunately. Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown – every time they open their mouths they make things worse. They’re lying to us. They’re saying it’s just about controlling spending. They’re saying, “If we got a different person, me, in there, everything would be fine.” The best thing Meg Whitman can do for the state is end her campaign and put that money into the changing of public opinion. She could spend $100 million to send our book to every Californian. We would do it for a discount! But instead what she’s saying is often completely misleading and distorted. She’s giving people false information about the state, and that’s profoundly problematic. Brown is in some ways worse. He says things about Proposition 13 being the greatest thing that ever happened. He knows better, more than anyone alive. But he’s running for office.

The one political endorsement that I will ever issue is, don’t vote for governor this year. Not voting, leaving it blank, has value. In California, the requirement for a qualifying initiative or referendum is the support of a percentage of the number of people who voted in the most recent gubernatorial election. If you don’t vote for governor, you’re making it easier to pass referenda in California. You’re making it easier for people to come up with bad ideas, of course, but you’re also easing the way for good ideas.

Q. Does California need a new constitution?

A. We need a new one. The old one is a mess. It’s very long. People say India and Alabama have famously long constitutions, too. Constitutions should be simple. We have lots of things that don’t belong in it – from special tax rates to the kind of gill nets you use in commercial fishing.

We probably need to start over. Everyone’s scared of the blank page, but we should start with a blank page. Rather than negotiate every edit with every interest group that likes something in the Constitution, we can start anew. I think it’ll be politically easier. It’s also something we’ve never done. I don’t count the 1849 rogue convention where they plagiarized Iowa’s constitution and took out all the explanations of how to pay for things. We need a founding. We should invite people and let people dress up and make it a big party. I think anyone who wants to show up should come. Given the level of civic engagement in the state, I don’t think it’ll be an unmanageable number of people.

There are people doing some of this already. There are efforts online – Mark is involved with one. I always compare it to fantasy football. People who are really addicted to this – not me, not me, I swear – know that before the draft, you can do a mock draft to plan, to strategize. You create this in a wiki sort of way, with 12 other random people. We need that functionality for constitution writing in California.

Q. Given the state of the state, how did California become a model for the rest of the country?

A. I don’t know if we’re a model, but, I think the Gold Rush is the answer to that question, ultimately. We were this place of dreams that was talked about and watched from afar from our very beginning. Sometimes people pay less attention to us – we ebb and flow. We’re so big now, and so important. Obama seems to be trying to do it, but really, you can’t bring back the American economy without the California economy. That’s something I don’t think Obama quite understands, or he’d be doing more for us.

We’re less a model than we are an alternative. It’s the [Carey] McWilliams metaphor – we’re the great exception. We’re a parallel country within the country, separated by distance and some pretty big mountains from power and the rest of the country. Sometimes we do things that people want to do the exact opposite of, and sometimes they want to follow us. Certainly for the last generation we have been a technology capital, and that has a way of spreading our values and thinking. We’re also a pop cultural capital, and that has a way of giving us an outsize footprint in the world. And we’re just better looking. Really. That’s a fully-researched claim, with the full force of a think tank behind it. I mean, aren’t we?

*Photo of flag courtesy welshbaloney.


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