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Serious times, in America's state capitals, call for serious men and women to make serious decisions. In Tennessee, lawmakers debate the merits of introducing a personal income tax. In Illinois, it's the death penalty that undergoes legislative scrutiny. In Florida, the governor and the legislature are fast at work on reform of a child-welfare system that has led to tragic results. And California?
Let's just say that, for the time being, serious folks need not apply. Faced with everything from a sluggish economy, to a massive $23.6 billion deficit (roughly 30 percent of the state's general fund), to an infrastructure that's Reaganesque only in that it dates from the 1970s — lawmakers last week took action to address what's really the most pressing concern facing the world's fifth-largest economy: whether to prohibit public high schools or their mascots from being named after American Indian tribes. The good news: State-assembly lawmakers came to their senses and rejected the bill (though it will come up for another vote). The bad news: If you thought this measure was the high-water mark of a silly season of bad legislation, guess again. In Sacramento, there is no one season for wasting the taxpayers' time. It's a year-round sport, and may be America's worst example of legislators gone amok. Granted, it should come as no surprise that the combined efforts of 120 lawmakers — two-thirds of them Democrats, and most of them liberal — will produce legislation such as: SB 1525, a.k.a. the "Frankenfish Bill," which would make it "illegal to import, possess or release alive into California any live transgenic fish" ("transgenic" meaning an animal into which cloned genetic material has been transferred). Sounds like someone watched one too many episodes of The Simpsons" with "Blinky," the three-eyed fish that swims by the nuclear-power plant. AB 2532, which would require school boards to develop and distribute standards for reducing excessive backpack weight among schoolchildren. (How long before the teachers' unions spin this into an argument for more dollars for teachers' salaries and less for those awful, weighty tomes of, well, books?) SB 1526, which declares it as the official policy of California to have zero waste — as in, no garbage. Commonsense dictates that there's only way to achieve zero waste: Achieve zero productivity. AB 388, which requests that the University of California conduct an assessment of economic opportunities that would be available through the production of specialty or alternative fiber crops — i.e., hemp. Party at Woody Harrelson's following the bill-signing. This is not to suggest that a limit be placed on free speech or the democratic process. Rather, the question is how California can put the brakes on legislators with overactive imaginations — especially when the number-one concern in Sacramento isn't Redskins, it's red ink. There is one way out of this mess. Ironically, it calls for a return to a dynamic detested by the media and good-government types: divided government. Back in the mid 1990s, California enjoyed a brief respite of legislative quality control, the happy byproduct of a Republican governor and state assembly pitted against a Democratic state senate. With the assembly blocking the senate's worst intentions, the number of bills arriving on then-Gov. Pete Wilson's desk fell by about one-third. Republican legislators had the good sense, and the proper means, to make sure the governor's time wasn't wasted by issues like killer hash — or killer mutant fish. At present, California lacks that quality control. Instead, legislation has become a game of chicken between the state legislature and the incumbent governor, Democrat Gray Davis. To his credit, Davis at times has shown the policy (and political) smarts to prevent an accident from occurring. In April, for example, he said he would veto an assembly bill that would significantly broaden teachers' collective-bargaining rights to include the issues of textbooks and curricula. Davis was right when he said such matters should not be "held hostage to issues involving wages." At other times, unfortunately, it's the governor who blinks first and so the legislature wins — and the citizenry suffer. That's how California stumbled into the slave-reparations debate. Two years ago, Davis signed a pair of bills — one called for the collection of data on insurers' past slave policies; the other created a UC panel charged with putting a price tag on the "the economic benefits of slavery." Forget that California was admitted to the union as a free state. If you're a California business with ties to the mid 19th century, you may be in for a rude surprise. So far in the California governor's race, the focus of attention has been on Gray Davis's record — his performance in office and his questionable ties to donors. Perhaps it's time for the Republican challenger, Bill Simon Jr., to point out that it's not only the Democratic governor, but also his fellow Democrats who run the legislature, who are evidence of what's wrong in Sacramento. It shouldn't take much to show voters that it's a fine kettle of fish — transgenic or not. — Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. |
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legislatures have only one silly season; in California, it's a year-round
affair.
