July 06, 2009
The GOP's California hope?
George Will sang the praises this weekend of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, thought by many to be the GOP's best chance for winning the upcoming gubernatorial race -- and salvaging the state's flatlining economy.
Whitman, a Roman candle of facts and ideas, insists, "We do not have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem of epic proportions." Twenty-five percent of California's revenue comes from income taxes paid by the 144,000 richest taxpayers, so "if one of them leaves, it's a really bad thing." Lots have left. Some never really arrive. Pierre Omidyar, after founding eBay in San Jose, resided in Nevada, which has no income tax.
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She emphatically opposes a change that many proponents of a new Constitution favor -- eliminating the requirement of a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature to pass a budget or raise taxes. Without those provisions, "taxes would be so high we might not have a state left." Today's most pressing problem -- government in the grip of public employees unions -- is, she thinks, ripe for improvement: 85 percent of the state's unionized employees are working without contracts.
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Because legislators feel validated by volume, the Legislature is, she says, a "bill machine." She vows to wield the veto power as vigorously as did Republican Govs. Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian, who cast 1,890 and 2,298 vetoes, respectively. The current calamitous governor wanted, as movie stars do, to be loved, but Whitman says tersely: "Getting elected is a popularity contest. Governing is the opposite."
What's not to like? Well, Will glosses over Whitman's plans for fixing the legislature, addressing a structural flaw in the composition of the Assembly.
She endorses a convention to revise California's Constitution, which was written in 1879 and has been amended 518 times. She would reduce the number of state Assembly districts (there are 80), because the Legislature is cumbersome, and would modify the initiative and referendum process.
Whitman's right: the Assembly is the problem, but reducing the number of districts is exactly the wrong thing to do. The California legislature suffers from the same problem as the House of Representatives: it's paradoxically too busy and too small.
With only 80 districts, the per capita representation in this enormous state means that legislators can't possibly be in touch with what their constituents actually want; Congress, with 435 Representatives, suffers from the same problem on a much larger scale.
More districts -- not less -- would mean that each Assemblyman would necessarily be elected by fewer voters, increasing the power of the constituents and consequently ensuring greater responsiveness on the part of the elected representatives.
Another benefit of more -- and smaller -- Assembly districts is less expensive campaigns. With the number of votes needing to be bought, er, won, more people who would otherwise be priced out could afford to run for office.
The same naturally applies to Congress. The seats should simply be apportioned after every census, additional seats being created to ensure that the Congressman-to-citizen ratio is no greater than what it was at the time the Constitution was ratified.
Still, given that the likely Democratic nominee will be either San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom or Jerry Brown, the once and future Gov. Moonbeam, the GOP is going to be hard-pressed to nominate someone worse -- although being the Stupid Party, I have no doubt that the GOP will try.
Posted by Mike Lief at July 6, 2009 10:58 PM
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Comments
The Assembly - more of them, and PART-TIME! They need real jobs.
Posted by: andrewdb at July 7, 2009 09:00 AM