State government is broken.  Just about everybody agrees – including an apparently
growing number of Californians.  Poll
after poll shows a large majority of voters believe the state on the "wrong
track" and nearly as many suspect dysfunction in Sacramento is to blame.

So, lawmakers, business leaders, think tanks, local elected
officials and other organized interests are actively advancing some kind of "fix
it" plan – or plans for a plan.  Special committees of the Legislature have been formed, calls
for a constitutional convention are being made and political pundits are
endlessly speculating on a basketful of ideas.

Primary attention is focused on the Legislature and its
myriad "processes" although a strong case can and should be made for closely
examining the excesses, overlap and accountability of state bureaucracies.  (Remember the "boxes" to be blown up a
few years back?) 

To be sure, discussions about reform have been and will continue
to be exciting.  But, can anything
get done?  It will be hard, for
example, for budgeteers to detail a new, multi-year discipline for budgeting since
nearly all their attention for the next several years will paid to matching state
revenues with state expenditures.  Another
popular reform would have the Legislature devote the first year of a two-year
legislative cycle to just budget business.  Good idea, but can agreement on this one be easily
reached?  And, the way things are
going politically, it’s unlikely voters want to change the state constitution
to allow budgets and taxes to be approved by a simple majority of the
Legislature or to extend legislative term limits, as some reformers are
suggesting.

So, here’s a reform idea that people should be able to agree
on and would go a long way to establishing order at the Capitol, and might even
help to restore voter confidence in state government once again.  How about simply establishing means to
formally set California’s public policy priorities each year for elected
leaders in Sacramento to follow in all their lawmaking and policy-making?  We all set priorities – we have
to.  We do it every day – to
establish order, to manage time and expectations and to, confidently, get
things done.  So, why not state
government.

To illustrate, let’s say that job creation is set as the top
priority for 2010.  Certainly, a
strong case can be made for ranking this high on everyone’s priority list.  Indeed, with over 12 percent of the state’s
workforce unemployed, it would be hard for the Governor or any legislator to
say it isn’t tops.  Following an
announcement – to the public and their governing colleagues – state leaders would
then proceed to institute a plan whereby the normal business of state
government for the year is organized to accomplish a jobs agenda. 

Specific changes in the Legislature might start with a
declaration that except for emergencies and the budget, other issues will have
to wait until the jobs agenda can be completed.  Jobs bills would be automatically fast-tracked and would
take effect immediately upon the signature of the Governor.  Rules on scoring would change to allow
the use of "dynamic" fiscal analyses to better assess the true value of job-creation
legislation, like tax credits.  For
a measure of accountability, legislative committees would resume traditional
oversight responsibilities – holding hearings to assess the performance of
state government in meeting the goals of California’s "jobs" agenda.

Doing his part to put things in motion, the Governor would issue
an executive order instructing state agencies and departments to perform
jobs-impact or economic-impact analyses before moving forward with new
regulations or policy initiatives. 
Just for starters.

Besides the potential benefits from the lawmaking and
policy-making, how do unhappy and performance-hungry voters benefit from this
simple reform?  They get the
entirety of state government organized around and acting unambiguously each
year on a specific objective – something they really care about.  Attitudes out there seem to suggest voters
haven’t seen that from their state government for a long time. 

It shouldn’t take long or be too difficult to put a jobs
plan for 2010 in motion.  Indeed, the
preamble is already written.  It
appears in Assembly Concurrent Resolution 83 by Assembly Member Dan Logue and
says, among other things:

"[T]he Legislature calls upon every
instrumentality of state government to immediately make the retention of
existing private sector employment and the creation of new private sector
employment its highest priority; and . . . the Legislature will itself take a
leading role in restoring California’s business climate to a status that
invites entrepreneurs and private sector employers and their employees to
retain, locate, and create new jobs in California . . ."

So, let’s try it out – by making job creation California’s
top priority in 2010 and sticking to it until we’re satisfied that it’s done.