California: A Season of Reform?


Cross-posted on Hoover Institution’s Advancing a Free Society.

Until the California economy (and tax revenues) begins to recover, a window of opportunity remains open for fiscal and governance reforms in the state. Slow, quietly, such reforms have begun, first with the enactment of redistricting reform and then the open primary. This week the California Assembly has before it SB 14, which calls for performance-based budgeting, and SB 15, which requires a multi-year budget.

This summer, several California organizations joined together to set the stage for additional reforms by convening the first statewide California Deliberative Poll. We brought together a scientific random sample of 412 Californians to spend a weekend deliberating over additional reforms that might help get the state moving again. The results of these deliberations were announced this week: www.nextca.org.