Blow up California government, start over

Published online on Sunday, Jul. 26, 2009

It's time for someone to state the obvious about California's legislative system. It's not working.

How much more evidence do we need? The lawmakers can't even get a balanced budget on time and limp from phony fix to phony fix. Forget about asking them to find solutions to the state's most serious challenges, including providing enough water for a state of 38 million people, giving us a decent transportation system and improving our public schools.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger went to Sacramento promising to "blow up the boxes" of state government. He got co-opted by the very government he wanted to change. The reason is obvious. You can't be part of Sacramento and fix it. You have too many people advising you whose jobs rely on the broken system.

So let's stop tinkering with state government and do something dramatic. We can start by abolishing the California Legislature and replacing it with a unicameral system that doesn't rely on the political parties to make it work. The Assembly and Senate have proven their ineptness and now it's time for a new approach with a one-house legislative system.

I've been proposing this for the past few years. And the unicameral legislature should be nonpartisan and part-time. Our problems started when the Legislature went full time four decades ago, making our lawmakers professional politicians.

The lawmakers in the new system would have to have real jobs for part of the year so they would understand what it's like to pay taxes and struggle to come up with the fees and money for books to put your kids through college. They also wouldn't be taking their marching orders from Democratic and Republican bosses.

No more checking with the Democratic caucus for permission to vote on building a dam and they wouldn't have to run their vote on taxing oil companies by the Republican Party. If their consciences told them those votes were the right thing to do, they should vote for them. They would only have to answer to the constituents in their districts.

The Legislature sure doesn't need two houses whose only current purpose is to supply jobs for staff members and give lawmakers another office to run for once they are termed out. Those aren't compelling reasons to keep the status quo. At the very least, we could cut the legislative budget in half by having only one house instead of the redundant Assembly and Senate.

But there are policy reasons to have only one house. The attention of members would be on issues and not on looking to jump to the other chamber to keep employed. The legislative leaders would be elected by all members, and not just the party in power. That would ensure that the leadership would more broadly reflect California instead of the political fringes.

This is the system in Nebraska. Last year, I interviewed Nebraska state Sen. Bill Avery and this is what he told me for a previous column on the unicameral system.

"You only have one chamber and only 49 members," Avery said. "The speaker is elected at large by majority vote of the members. You cannot be perceived as an ideologue to get along in this body. You have to work with all members, and build personal relationships.

"The biggest strength of the unicameral system in Nebraska is that it's probably the most open and accountable system in America."

Contrast that with California, where the current budget deal was conceived in secret after five months of negotiating. That was because the first budget deal, which was also done in secret, also blew up.

The system we have now can't produce an on-time budget, and will never confront the state's biggest problems. The politicians cling to it because that's all they are trained to do. But the public doesn't have to keep it.

The best thing about the latest budget mess is that it reminds us we must make a change. If we don't, next year's budget will be late and unbalanced. You can count on it.