California's balanced budget? Hold the applause.
Although Gov. Jerry Brown has pronounced California's "did the impossible" with its balanced budget, the state is still in miserable condition. Like the federal government, it has to make some hard choices going forward. And voters need to make an extra effort to participate in state politics.
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Like the federal government and many other states, California will have to curb additional spending and debt. To his credit, the governor spoke in his State of the State about preparing for the “leaner times that will surely come.” That same speech, though, raised serious doubts about whether he really meant it. He proudly noted that California is going forward with a huge high-speed rail project, even though critics across the political spectrum have pointed out that it is ridiculously unnecessary, exorbitantly expensive, and environmentally harmful.
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Underlying the state’s fiscal malaise is a severe shortage of political accountability. Elected officials have little incentive to make tough decisions, because they pay no political price for evading them.
Accountability requires that voters know what the politicians are doing. In California, they generally do not. In a survey last year, only 16 percent of adults said that they knew a lot about how state and local governments spend and raise money, and 38 percent said they knew some. And even among those who said they had a lot or some knowledge, only 18 percent could correctly identify the biggest area of state spending (K-12 education).
Part of the problem is structural. California has a complex government organization chart that only policy wonks really understand. (For instance, few voters know that key tax decisions belong to a powerful body called the Board of Equalization.) Legislative districts are gargantuan: Any one California state senator represents a population greater than that of South Dakota. Accordingly, California government is remote from average citizens.
Years ago, Californians could rely on the mass media to cast some light on this remote government. But that light is flickering. California has many gifted political reporters, but fewer and fewer of them are covering state politics. In recent years, newspapers have slashed or closed their bureaus in the state capital, and many have cut back on local coverage as well.
How could California bring accountability back? Streamlining state government would better enable voters to see which officials have responsibility for which decisions. Reducing the size of legislative districts would bring lawmakers closer to the people. The mass media could help by renewing their commitment to reporting on policy at the state and local level.
Unfortunately, government reform does not have much of an interest-group constituency, and journalism reform runs into the cold headwinds of media economics. In the end, voters just have to make an extra effort to participate in state politics. That prescription may be idealistic, but it’s not entirely fanciful, either. To paraphrase the late journalist Eric Sevareid, we should neither overestimate the voters’ information nor underestimate their intelligence. Sooner or later, the alarms will get their attention, and we may hope that they will demand accountability.
If voters turn that potential into participation, then California really will have done the impossible – and presented a model for the nation.
John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College.
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