Full Time Legislature and the Rise of the Initiative
Would a part time legislature lead to fewer initiatives?
I ask this question after pulling out an op-ed I had published in the Sacramento Bee over twenty years ago. In defending the initiative process in that piece, I wrote:
“The initiative remained popular with California voters in the 1920s and 1930s but slowly disappeared from common use. However, initiatives as an expression of voters’ frustrations came back in the 1970s – not coincidentally, soon after Californians approved a full-time legislature.”
What sent me digging into old files were observations made by Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Walters at the recent constitutional convention town hall in Orange County last week. Walters argued that the 1966 reform, which created a full time legislature, did not bring the promised improvements in governance supporters across the political spectrum predicted at the time.
Show Us the Money in Water Deal
While the devil is always in the details, usually it’s a pretty good idea to at least provide those details.
That’s not always the way the state Legislature works, however.
Darrell Steinberg, Democratic leader of the state Senate, said Monday that this week’s conference committee report on a package of bills designed to preserve the Delta, provide water to all of California and end decades of fighting over how to deal with the state’s single most important resource won’t include a plan to pay for any of that.
That’s right, after months of often heated talks and three weeks of long hearings and closed-door meetings by the bipartisan, 14-member committee, the Legislature still can’t agree on a price tag for the huge water package.
Mild prescription for Tax Commission
Despite the high expectations set for the Commission on the 21st Century Economy (a.k.a. the “Tax Commission”), it is more likely than not that their recommendations for tax changes will be relatively modest. The Commission meets this Thursday and possibly again the following Monday, September 14.
How can modesty prevail when the stakes are so high and the key proposals surfaced in the Commission are so far-reaching? For starters, the Commission comprises serious scholars, business leaders and policy experts whose reputations enhance the Commission – not the other way around. These Commissioners did not build their resumes by endorsing half-baked proposals and were not selected for their talents at horse trading.
But perhaps more revealing is the growing resistance by Commissioners to addressing the state’s budget volatility through the tax system. Remember: fixing volatility was the ostensible reason the Commission was created in the first place. For example, Legislative appointees have opined that:
Post Labor Day 2009: The Jobs Lost Forever in California…And Those That Might Emerge
I do employment commentary for several of our California radio and television stations, and this Labor Day 2009, the main story was the national unemployment rate of 9.7% announced last Friday (including the more than 25% teen unemployment rate—the highest since this rate was first tracked in 1948). But the longer term story of Labor Day 2009 is the California jobs lost that will not return, and the future of employment in California.
Over the past year, California has lost over 700,000 jobs, and many of these jobs are not coming back, even when the recession is over. The twin forces of globalization and technology are impacting a range of employment sectors, particularly employment in retail, financial services, and professional and business services. Retail employment has fallen in California from 1,631,500 jobs in July 2008 through July 2009 from 1,631,500 jobs to 1,521,100 jobs–a loss of over 110,000 retail jobs. As sales move to the internet, auto dealerships, electronics stores, clothing stores, and other retail outlets no longer have the need for salespersons in a shop or dealership.