Letter from Seoul: California Direct Democracy Doesn’t Meet International Standards
This week, I’m in South Korea attending the 2nd Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, which brings together journalists, academics, and activists with an interest in initiative and referendum. (There are people from 25 countries here).
One presentation came from a representative of the so-called Venice Commission (aka The European Commission for Democracy Through Law), an independent think tank that advises the Council of Europe on constitutional matters. The Venice Commission has formulated a code of good conduct for direct democracy. It offers the most widely accepted international standard for initiative and referendum elections.
Reading it from the perspective of a Californian is sobering. The state doesn’t meet the standards in several regards:
-Administrative neutrality. The commission says that officials administering elections must be completely neutral. California’s secretary of state is a partisan office
California makes Washington ‘look to polish up investment strategies’
The President of the Association of Washington Business, Don Brunell, wrote a piece this week asking Washington state policymakers to "polish up their investment strategies for Washington’s manufacturing base" or risk California’s fate.
Brunell uses recent reports and the Milken findings to explain how California has killed and continues to kill the proverbial golden egg that it needs for its recovery and new revenues.
Even the well-read British magazine, the Economist, supported Brunell’s findings. "Indeed, high taxes, coupled with intrusive regulations on business and greenery taken to silly extremes, have gradually strangled what was once America’s most dynamic state economy," Brunell noted from the magazine.
A great read for any policymaker: Golden State’s manufacturing image tarnished
California State Parks and the “Washington Monument Strategy”
At the federal level, it’s called the “Washington Monument Strategy.” When bureaucrats are threatened with budget cuts, they say they have no choice but to close important facilities or eliminate the most publicly recognized programs in their respective agencies, as the National Park Service might do with the Washington Monument. Even though it’s often successful, many consider the ploy to be nothing more than a bluff. Sadly, it’s no bluff for California State Parks.
While a direct cut of about $16 million, 11% of its General Fund allocation, may seem modest, the inevitable result will be the full or partial closure of a substantial number of California’s 278 state parks. Most accounts put that number at near 100.
How did we get here? Ironically, State Parks is a victim of its own efficiency, having learned to make do with less long before the current crisis. State budget deficits in the early 1990’s led to the elimination of nearly 600 positions and a streamlining of the Department’s structure to eliminate an entire layer of middle management. During the economic boom times in 2000, fees were decreased by nearly 50%, while the General Fund allocation was increased by some $30 million to make up for the lost fee revenue.