May 28 2009
What about a constitutional convention?
Is California too big to govern? Should the constitution be changed because of the way California has grown?
People who answer these have come up with the following solutin: Having a constitutional convention to change the constitution of California to make it more governable.
California has had two previous constitutional conventions: in 1849 and in 1878, which produced our current system. In 1962, the constitution had grown to 75,000 words, which at that time was longer than any other state constitution but Louisiana. That year, the electorate approved the creation of a “California Constitution Revision Commission,” which worked on the constitution from 1964 to 1976. The legislature placed revisions emanating from the Commission on the ballot. The electorate ratified the Commission’s revisions in 1966, 1970, 1972, and 1974. In the end, the Commission managed to remove about 40,000 words from the constitution, but otherwise made only minor changes.
There is no authority, in California, for limiting the scope of a constitutional convention. There have been other state courts that recognize a constitutional convention is limited to the reasons that the people agree it is needed. However, there is no authority for the guarantee in California. A constitutional convention could turn into a free-for-all where nothing will be decided.
The Bay Area Council is the main group pushing for a constitutional convention. They have said there are four areas that need to be addressed in the convention:
• Governance, including the structure of the legislative and executive branches of government, with the latter to include State agencies and commissions.
• Elections, including the initiative and referenda processes, campaign finance, and term limits.
• The Budget, including the budget process and related requirements, such as the 2/3rds legislative vote required to pass a budget, the term and balancing of a budget, and mandated spending.
• Revenue distribution, including the revenue relationship between local and state government.
These aren’t small areas of the law. These are huge, sweeping areas. In fact, the four areas cover almost all the laws in California. There might be some penal code laws that are not included, but even those could be tied to the budget and prison spending. This type of elaborate plan means that the convention would be a madhouse; it would be a crazy situation where everyone is trying to get their piece into the constitution.
Interest groups will try and get tehir protections in place. The CTA (teachers union) will try and get teacher tenure and funding in place so that it cannot be changed. Labor will try and get favorable positions in the constitution, and so will conservatives. This clash between the big players in California politics ensures that a new constitution is a pie-in-the-sky idea, and not a concrete reality.
However, what will relaly doom the California constitution is the issue of marriage. Either the new constitution will say that marriage is legal between any consenting adults, or that marriage is limited to a man and a woman. In either case, the constitution will not be able to get the 2/3 vote of the people that it needs to be adopted. There is not 2/3 of Californians who support either position on marriage. This means, more than any other reason, that there will be no new California constitution.
The scholars say that there are ways to prevent these issues from coming up, and there are ways to control the interest groups. The realist says, “yeah right.”
So while a constitutional convention may sound like a new, and nifty, solution to many of California’s problems; it is not. It is simply a random idea, and needs to be eneded because it is not practical.
They could easily take the Washington D. C. stance and just ignore the Constitution, altogether. Unfortunately, California is the “tip of the iceberg” and the rest of the states will follow shortly if the government continues to spend. How many states does it take to sink a nation??
gyroscope2000.today.com
NWunderlich,
Your concern for the health and future of California is admirable. However, some corrections in your article are in order.
On your comment,
“There have been other state courts that recognize a constitutional convention is limited to the reasons that the people agree it is needed. However, there is no authority for the guarantee in California. A constitutional convention could turn into a free-for-all where nothing will be decided.”
Not true. What limits the conventions in other states, such as Hawaii’s 1978 convention, is the language of the document that calls for the constitutional convention.
The ballot initiative being prepared in California contains such language. It would limit the convention to the areas of reform you mention above. Prohibited topics include culture issues like abortion and gay marriage, as well as any change to Property Tax laws associated with proposition 13.
Being a California Republican, you may also be interested in learning that one of the main ambitions of the convention would be to establish a Sunset Commission, based on the Texas model, that would have the authority and mandate to review every state commission every certain number of years and determine whether or not it should be eliminated. This mechanism has been very useful in reducing the size of government in Texas.
The way you have described this is very thorough. I will link your blog page to mine
That’s not truely the case about limiting the convention. The problem is that the language of the convention says that any vote limit requirement may be examined. However, the propaganda for it says that the 2/3 requirement for riasing taxes will not be examined. But the language of the convention call specifically states that it can be examined.
I am interested in the Sunsent Commission. I just don’t think that it should take another commission to do what the Legislature is already suppsoed to do here as part of its job. The Department of Finance comes up, sometimes, with suggestions about things that can be eliminated (but then these are edited by the Governor before ever going public). But the Legislature, in California, has a responsibility to do that work as part of its job. There is no reason to continually farm out hard decisions to comissions simply because the Leigslature doesn’t want to deal with them. That doesn’t make any sense.
And the Sunset Commission, while a good idea, is subject to high political pressures because of who appoints the members. They would never, ofr instance, consider eliminating Medi-Cal: even though the law doesn’t require a state to have a program and that the program is ineffective and the federal programs are much more efficient - in terms of costs and administration.
That’s just my opinion. The duality of the consitutional convention call is very strange. It says one thing, and then the information put out says another, it is contradictory and confusing.