Opinion: California: The Titanic of legislatures
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Take two bills and call me in the morning.
That’s apparently our Legislature’s approach to healing the state.
As the Los Angeles Times’ Michael J. Mishak reported Monday, state lawmakers have introduced 2,323 bills this year.
There are bills on caffeinated beer, on encouraging the spaying and neutering of pets, on regulating the reflectivity of pavement, on how to describe a dog pound, even on creating a ‘Parks Make Life Better’ month.
But hey, when the lawmakers get through with those, maybe they can toss around ideas on how to fix the $25-billion budget shortfall.
Oh wait, they don’t have to -- they just have to vote to let us vote on whether we want to continue temporary tax increases. Let’s hope they can get to that in between considering a tax break for the spaceport in Mojave and a stricter definition of olive oil.
(We interrupt this column to take you to the North Atlantic, where the first mate is speaking to the captain of the RMS Titanic: ‘Sir, should we move some of the deck chairs? A lot of them seem to be underwater.’)
And who’s to blame for this mess? Let’s try that old favorite, term limits.
‘These legislators show up, they’re not here for long, and they want to do everything they ever thought of,’ Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant in Sacramento, told Mishak.
Yes, of course. That’s what Jean Ross says too. She’s the executive director of the independent California Budget Project; Patt Morrison’s interview with her ran on Saturday’s Op-Ed page (‘Jean Ross: Budgeteer’).
‘I’m old enough to believe that experience matters and that government is rocket science, or brain surgery. You can have the best people in the world in public office today and [because of term limits] they won’t have the time to gain that experience. ‘[Governing] ... in a state as complex as California, where you have decades of ballot measures that interact with one another in perverse ways, when you have complex relationships between the federal, state and local government -- it makes your head spin.’
Could be. She knows a lot more about government than most of us.
But I say, blame illegal immigrants.
Why? Because:
1. It guarantees that I will get hundreds of comments on this article.
2. It saves the commenters time; eventually, someone will make that point anyway, and then other commenters will chime in either for or against. (See the ‘Santa Anna line’ law by my colleague, Jon Healey.
3. It would be silly to blame Barack Obama and Democrats who are intent on bringing socialism to America. (Although that would also guarantee hundreds of comments. But I do have standards. Besides, someone will make the point for me that Barack Obama is actually an illegal immigrant himself.)
However, back in the real world, there is good news. Just like illegal immigration has been declining, this year’s spate of bills is actually less than average, Mishak reported. In fact, the volume has been dropping since a cap was applied in the early 1990s.
So, maybe there will be time to get to that budget after all.
But not the illegal immigrants.
RELATED:
California’s budget: It’s time to make a deal
Online commenters: Santa Anna’s law
-- Paul Whitefield
