Opinion: A 140-character blueprint for California

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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a new forum this week for Californians to pitch their ideas for how to fix the state’s problems. But at MyIdea4CA.com, there’s not much room for explaining how to implement an idea, what the benefits might be or how much it might cost. In fact, there’s not much room, period. That’s because the site publishes the ideas that people submit via Twitter, which has a 140-character limit on its messages.

That doesn’t strike me as the greatest way to tap the public’s imagination and resourcefulness, particularly not when dealing with issues as complex as the state’s budget mess. Then again, I write long. Even my emoticons run longer than 140 characters. Besides, people can always include links in their tweets to lengthy blog posts or white papers about their ideas, as Paul Benedict (aka paulbenedict7) did in the following tweet on the state budget: ‘Reduce costs by fewer gov rules that must be enforced: http://www.nolanchart.com/article6524.html.’ Most of the others weighing in on the budget problems, though, went with simple one- or two-sentence prescriptions, such as ‘automate unemployment biweekly claims. Permit online filing and direct deposit like tax returns’ and ‘Add variable gas taxes, when it’s low in way to obtain money for debts.’ Then there’s this from Francisco MelliHuber (aka fmelli): ‘get a new governor who’s not insane.’

Got a proposal for the Gubernator? Send out a Tweet with the hashtag ‘#myidea4ca.’ But remember, keep it short. He’s running out of time.

-- Jon Healey