The vote was nearly unanimous and the next day, the Assembly followed suit in a rare showing of bipartisan unanimity.
In a moment of understatment, then Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg was quoted as saying, “I understand it’s not a perfect plan.”
Indeed, the plan preserved the status quo, cut across communities of interest, advantaged some minority groups at the expense of others and most importantly made sure that nearly every district in the Assembly, Senate and Congress was safely in the hands of Democrats or Republicans.
That’s why we have seen nothing but legislative gridlock ever since, a budget catastrophe that led to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis and an even worse one today that ought to cost them all their elected offices.
With all but a few districts in the hands of one party or another, primary elections almost always go to very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans and the general elections are a farce with little chance of the minority party in the district pulling off an upset.
“We won’t have to worry about elections
for six, eight, 10 years because they are all preset. Everybody wins,”
said a rare independent voice, Republican Assemblyman Tim Leslie. “What happened to drawing
lines for the people of the state rather than ourselves?”
The problem in the Legislature isn’t the constitutional requirement of a two-thirds majority to adopt a state budget or the taxpayer protections of Prop. 13. It is the lack of centrists, people who reflect the views of the majority of voters in the mainstream of our political life.
They needed the darkness of tragedy, of a nation in shock and shaken by fear, to enact a redistricting plan that was embroiled in controversy and conflict as late as Sept. 10, the day before the Twin Towers came down.
The result of the legislature’s action on redistricting has been a catastrophe for the people of California — a catastrophe that will diminish the quality of our lives for years to come.
The latest budget deal isn’t a solution to the state’s financial crisis. The problem is masked over for the moment by robbing the cities, counties and schools, freeing hardened criminals onto our streets and cutting off services to the old, the poor and the sick.
The ideologues are still in charge and in service to the same special interests.. They have fought every effort to bring about competitive legislative districts, respect geographical boundaries and communities of interests.
We don’t need a constitutional convention that strips away protections of taxpayers. We need fair and balanced districts where moderates can be elected, people who will represent the disenfranchised majority of the citizenry.
So that’s the answer to the question why those people are laughing: They are sticking it to the people once again and think they can get away with it once again.
Will Prop 11 do anything to correct this and when will that take affect?
go ahead and make your house,s out of mud or cardboard!your shitty little town can stay just as is.pity shit for brains like you sure want a hand out as soon as you need one!cut your hair @ get a job,you bunch of losers!but you will not get a job you will just wait on the u.s.a to take care of your sorry asjust hold your hand out and i will fill it with my shit!
It won’t get fixed until it’s good and real broke.
Our state and local politics is so weird and out-of-touch with so many people it is supposed to represent that it barely merits being called a democracy.
It needs to break. It needs to collapse, explode, melt down or whatever. It needs a fabulous, spectacular failure.
Then we can sort through the wreckage and salvage what is valuable — those things that we value.
If it’s schools, let the people who value schools get off their butts and do what it takes to support the schools. Stop complaining and demonstrating for someone else to solve and pay for the problem. Hell, I’m willing to kick in a few bucks to help out if I’m convinced that it is worth it. But you need to come to me to make the case. Don’t pay a lobbyist to hustle my legislator.
Same goes for prisons.
Same goes for the environment.
Same goes for transportation.
Same goes for health care.
Same goes for the parks.
Same goes for the arts.
Same goes for libraries.
etc.
Hi Ron
I tend to disagree with you on the need to get rid of the two-thirds rule — I think it should go — but I can make the argument on utilitarian grounds if nothing else. But you are absolutely right on the gerrymandering problem, because that exacerbates the problem.
In a nutshell, if there were no two-thirds rule, and/or if there were no ballot initiative process, the state legislature would have been forced to enact property tax reform when the problems became critical in 1978. Instead they dithered, and we are stuck with prop 13, which is a major problem. Here’s the empirical argument backed up with real life experience. I moved from California to Indiana in 1980 and spent several years there. They don’t have anything comparable to California’s initiative system, but they were having their own problems with inadequate state tax revenues and property value inflation. The state legislature raised state income taxes (this is a very conservative state!) and enacted property tax reform, all in short order.
That legislature was a mix of conservatives and even more conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, but the reality for them was that they all would have been voted out the very next election if they had not fixed the problem. I suspect that the initiative system has provided an excuse for inaction to both sides in the California legislature — if you don’t get your way, threaten to put an initiative on the ballot. We all know what lousy laws this creates, either right wing extremism or left wing inefficiency.
To argue that getting rid of the two-thirds rule in California would result in wildly increasing taxes passed by wildly lefty Democrats is to imply that Democratic voters are insane and stupid. My experience is that they are not, and given the chance to vote for fiscally responsible Democrats in a system where that made a difference, they would. In order to do this more effectively, it would be nice to have less partisan districts, and your point is well taken about that.
What’s ridiculous about Republican grandstanding on budgets is that we have had Republican governors most of the time for decades. Why not just pass the damn budget and let the governor line item it down to a livable total? That’s how Ronald Reagan operated with a Democratic legislature, and the state sort of survived.
to the Legislature:
The budget is the job of the legislature and
you dummies know only one thing: get as much
public money as you can for your pet projects.
“The public voted for us so we have a right to play these games. The governor takes the beating
from the tax payers, and that is his job.”
Frankly when your job is termed out, you will be
left with all the problems you have created. Not even your Mom will love you, then.