Some California heavy hitters, led by the Bay Area Council and including Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, are meeting up in Sacto today to talk about a California Constitutional convention (pdf).
The idea: The state’s such a mess right now that we might as well get a group of people (not elected legislators) together and rewrite the rules for governing.
It’s either a brilliant idea or a horrible one, depending, to a great extent, on whether the progressives in this state have it together to influence the outcome. Otherwise, we’ll wind up with all sorts of awful stuff in there.
Guardian report Rebecca Bowe is there, and will be blogging on it later today, but an interesting element is already emerging. I just got a copy of Garamendi’s speech, and the Lt. Guv, who based on his history would seem to be the most moderate to conservative Democrat, is going out front on the reform platform:
“We have tied ourselves in knots with the two-thirds vote requirement. It’s time to go back to what this nation established years ago – a majority rule plan, plain and simple, on every issue,” Garamendi said. “That would solve a lot of problems. Whatever the minority party is, they should not dominate the policies of the state of California. That’s the two-thirds vote requirement on appropriations including the budget and taxes.”
That makes him the only leading Democrat in the governor’s race who is willing to say publicly that the Legislature ought to be able to raise taxes on a 55 percent vote.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, who built his early career on political reform, is running for the fences and hasn’t taken any position on the 2/3 requirement.
And San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who ought to be the liberal in the race, is kinda sorta playing the halfway game. Eric Jaye, his campaign manager, told me today that Newsom supports reducing the threshold for budget approval – but hasn’t decided about the tax threshold.
“It’s a question that’s been posed to him and he’s exploring it,” Jaye said. “There’s no question that the current system’s broken and needs to be fixed.”
Yes, it needs to be fixed – but fixing it by allowing the Democratic majority to pass a budget, and then allow the Republican minority to hold the state hostage because the anti-tax nuts won’t approve the spending measures, is worse than no fix at all.
So the lineup for gov is already shaping up in odd ways, with Garamendi becoming the populist reformer, Brown acting like the kind of politician he used to despise, and Newsom getting left behind with the really squishy can’t-take-a-stand center.