Dec 16 2008
Is California Too Big To Be Governable?
Is California too big to be governed effectively?
It is a valid question. In recent times there has been a lack of on-time budgets, a polarized legislature, rising levels of interest groups, and a rise in the use of ballot initiatives to govern. All of these are signs that California is not governed effectively.
But why?
The population of California is becoming more polarized, as are the regions where people live. The Bay Area has a distinctly different culture than other places in the state, LA and Sacramento (along with San Diego and other large metropolitan areas) are different fromo ther regions in the state and are pretty much self-contained. The north objects to the south taking all the water. Why should the water always ahve to go down south? The south objects to the lack of money coming down there from the north (although how that can be when the south gets 70% of education funding and most of the other funds).
Basically, you have at least 2 different states inside California - if not three.
Since the early 1980’s there has been a push to divide California into seperate states. It has repeatedly failed. Mostly because it would have to be ratified by the US Congress. Which means that there would be more senators coming from the West to balance out those in the East. Oh what a sadness (it is for the small eastern states who love the Senate because they hold a large caucus there, rather than the West where most of the population is which has a lower percentage of Senators).
It would also require drawing new boundaries for the state. In a state where they cannot draw political districts that look sane, what would state boundaries look like?
I agree that the state has not been governed effectively. The reason might be that it is too big. The reason also might be that the peopole doing the governing don’t really care about doing the governing - they care about re-election and getting elected to other offices after this one. Anyone who has served in the military or some other sort of service knows that service takes sacrifice. Sometimes the sacrifice asked is very personal. In the case of governing CA, the sacrifice that needs to be made is the chance of re-election.
As I want the new legislators to hear - you all WANTED to be here. Now get down to business and do what you were elected to do and stop worrying about your next election. If you do good things and solve problems, then you can always make a case for re-election. Simply do you job.
Stop complaining at all the rules (that includes Speaker Karen Bass). You knew what the rules were like when you took the job. Now DO THE JOB!
Have you seen a 51-star flag? It just looks funky… No but pushing that aside I think that there’s a good case to be made with this in a lot of states, but having polarized opinions isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It inspires creativity and critical thinking. When our legislators aren’t willing to work together to make things happen… well that’s been a problem country-wide for a while now.