The California Reform Industry: A Prognosis

Hoover Institution/Advancing a Free Society ^ | 6/29/12 | Joe Rodota

[leftofright]

In the current recession, the ranks of the unemployed in California have swelled by nearly 1.2 million.

Still, one industry seems to be thriving in America’s nation-state: the California “reform industry.”

The key organizations in the Golden State’s world of reform are California Forward and Think Long, each with high-profile board members (including Hoover’s George Shultz and Condoleezza Rice, former California Gov. Gray Davis and ex-Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, as well as leaders from business and labor organizations), a cadre of political and policy consultants, and enthusiastic funders.

I’m unaffiliated with either group. My perspective on state government was honed over the past two decades as a campaign consultant for Pete Wilson’s and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful gubernatorial runs; as Cabinet Secretary and Deputy Chief of Staff to Wilson; as a Schwarzenegger appointee to California’s Little Hoover Commission; and as a political strategist on more than 50 state and local ballot initiative efforts (including Proposition 14, which abolished partisan primary elections and replaced them with a “top-two” system that made its maiden voyage this June).

Over the years, I’ve culled through reams of reform proposals and have found an intriguing paradigm: the appetite for reform grows when the California economy (and state and local government finances) is under stress.

[humblegunner]

Earlier it was a “pognosis”.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2900946/posts

Which is it? Playing with pogs can make you indecisive.

[slowhandluke]

One other idea that received a great deal of attention in the Think Long playbook is its proposal for a “super committee” of respected and independent individuals able to place measures directly on California’s statewide ballot, bypassing both the Legislature and the traditional signature-gathering process.

So, the leftist plan is to resurrect the House of Lords?