Gov. Jerry Brown has played the politics of this particular
budget about as well as possible – getting buy in from public employee unions,
bringing business groups to the table, putting Republicans in the difficult
position of denying voters a chance to weigh in on his plan.
But Brown, because of California’s
bizarre governing system, still hasn’t gotten his plan passed. And it may be
that the GOP blockade remains in tact. Or that any concessions he makes to
Republicans cost him critical support from unions and Democrats.
And in the process, he may be doing
serious damage to his future ability to move the state forward.
The core of
Brown’s political problem is this: he is being defined as a status quo
politician in a state with an unsustainable status quo.
This is his
own fault. In his campaign, Brown offered no plan and sought no mandate for
systemic governance and budget reform. And so he won with no mandate and no
plan. And he hasn’t bothered to use his honeymoon as a new governor with a
popular wife and a cute dog to seek a reform mandate. Brown won’t even commit
to tackling reform somewhere down the road.
This has
left a vacuum that others are seeking to fill. Two letters sent to Brown this
week show the danger. On the right, five Republican state senators wrote him to
complain that he was refusing to take action in five areas – spending limit,
pension reform, tax reform, contracting out of public services, and
deregulation – that they had asked him to address as the price of voting for
his budget plan. From the center, a variety of reformers, led by the folks at
California Forward, wrote Brown to ask him to include a series of budget
reforms in his package.
If Brown
had a reform plan of his own, he could counter these kinds of pleas. Instead,
he has been silent on reform, except to say he doesn’t want to muck up his
budget plan with reform.
This is bad
for Brown, and the state, in two ways.
First, it
has allowed legislative Republicans to define reform and get oxygen for even
poor or unserious proposals (another spending limit?) that don’t address the
core governance problems of California. The governor should be having the
argument over reform, but he’s avoiding it to focus on the near-term budget.
He’s also talking constantly about a package of tax tensions that isn’t even
his own. His temporary tax extensions were developed by the previous governor
and would preserve existing rates. That’s the very definition of status quo.
Second, by refusing to address reform (even if only to say he’ll tackle systemic reform as soon as this immediate budget problem is dealt with), Brown is being defined as anti-reform. This is especially dangerous for a politician like Brown, a member of California’s political establishment for two generations.
Brown has been around so long that, fairly or not, he could easily come to embody the California system and its failings. Reformers gearing up for the 2012 and 2014 ballot may draw energy from opposing him. The left could become angry about cuts he’s pursued. The right is unhappy about his taxes. And those of us in the center, well… let’s just say California centrists are always unhappy.
Brown should get about the business of developing a structural reform program now. Or he may find himself on the business end of other people’s plans.