Fiscal woes imperil Schwarzenegger

With California's debt topping $16 billion, the governor is stuck with a legislative standoff over tax hikes.

from the February 29, 2008 edition

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The standoff is yet another indication that California's governance problems are structural rather than a reflection of its chief executive, say many analysts. "There are weights that even Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot lift," says Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College.

The heaviest of these, say Mr. Pitney and others, is the requirement of a two-thirds majority in the legislature to pass a budget. That is a high bar for any state, but especially so in California where over 75 percent of legislative districts are considered "safe," meaning incumbents are entrenched and have little fear of being voted out of office.

"It is nigh on impossible to get the legislature to agree on anything significant," says Barbara O'Connor, a political scientist at California State University, Sacramento.

The ideological differences are also magnified because of the state's gerrymandered district map, she says. Yet, attempts to redraw districts are regularly defeated – two such measures have failed in the past two years.

Another major structural problem is that many spending and income formulas are set by previous state initiatives, including a 1978 property tax cut and Prop. 98 which locks in a substantial proportion of the state budget for education.

Such policies "rob" the legislature's ability to shape spending, says Tony Quinn, a Sacramento-based analyst. "What we have here is auto-pilot spending which is a whole bunch of spending plans that are built into law that generate a larger and larger segment of the state budget every year and the legislature has less and less direction."

Despite the current impasse, most analysts agree that Schwarzenegger has brought a breath of fresh air into the statehouse. His popularity remains high – 58 percent approval in one recent state poll – in part because of his special brand of joviality, manifested in jokes from the bully pulpit, his self-deprecation, and his beneficent arm-twisting of legislators. His wife, Maria Shriver, has also helped his popularity.

"Everywhere they go, people love them and they love the fact that her Kennedy-family background has helped chasten Arnold's conservatism," says O'Connor.

Citing last year's ambitious initiatives on global warming and health insurance, O'Connor says: "People like [the fact] that he tries to slay the big dragons. He doesn't always win but they give him points for trying."

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