Vantage Point: Lawmakers fiddle while California’s crisis grows
Published: October 18, 2010
Once upon a time, you could mark your calendar around the state budget being signed right about the time you were getting ready to enjoy a barbecue and some fireworks at a Fourth of July celebration.
But as time went by, words that had not previously been a part of our political vocabulary— phrases like “budget stalemate” and “Big 5 negotiations”— came into play, and that date started to move back. Before you knew it, we began to see budgets signed during the dog days of summer, or even right around the start of the school year in early September.
But this year, we’ve crossed into new territory. Here we are in early October, with the leaves starting to turn, the mornings starting to become a bit chilly, the homes in neighborhoods across the state starting to display Halloween decorations, and the kids beginning to think about their costumes and just how much candy they’re going to come home with on the big night. And guess what? We now have a signed budget.
At the rate our Legislature is going, it won’t be long before we start having state budgets signed at a Veterans Day parade, or even perhaps while the turkey is being basted in the oven on Thanksgiving. Heck, maybe we’ll even see one signed around the time they light the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
What’s disappointing about all of this is that most folks just seem to take for granted these days that the people they send to represent them in Sacramento aren’t going to be able to change the culture of decision making— and might in fact have few means by which to insert themselves into the decision-making process. But then again, even though we all seem to like our local legislators, we have to wonder about a group that seems to think that it is important to move bills involving the statutory definition of honey, or whether cows from New Zealand should be used in advertisements for California cheese, or whether there should be a Lobster Commission … the list just goes on and on.
What makes all of this doubly disappointing is that everyone knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the state of California is in a crisis, and that there are plenty of things we could be doing about it. Remember just a year ago, when 2010 was supposed to be the big “year of reform?” Around that time, our hopes were high that substantive reforms would find their way onto this November’s statewide election ballot. Remember all the talk about “blowing up the boxes” at a constitutional convention? Remember how groups like California Forward were talking about putting together the building blocks of budget process reforms that were going to mark the dawning of a new day in Sacramento?
If you said no, I can’t blame you. But now is the time to remember all of that, and now is the time to think about what we are going to do about it. The future of our kids is at stake here, and if we don’t go down fighting, then we should be ashamed of ourselves.