Blowing Up Boxes With a Purpose: the New Green Economy
When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger first sought the Horseshoe in 2003, he famously announced his intention "blow up the boxes" in Sacramento. That goal appealed to a voting public tired of unbalanced budgets, confusing mazes of bureaucracy in Sacramento, and a seemingly endless number of state agencies with unintelligible acronyms for names and equally confusing mandates and authorities. Yet when it came time to actually trigger the explosions, the fuses apparently wouldn’t light.
The Governor called his state reorganization plan the "California Performance Review." Its stated mission was to "…restructure, reorganize and reform state government to make it more responsive to the needs of its citizens and business community." However, in the five years since its launch, any performance review of the California Performance Review would not be favorable.
Of the 88 Boards and Commissions targeted for elimination, most remain today. Of the Boards and Commissions that were eliminated, the bureaucracies that supported them were left behind to do their work with less public scrutiny.