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Opinion Editorials Coastal Voices Guest Editorial: Overhaul our state constitution
Coastal Voices Guest Editorial: Overhaul our state constitution
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There is not much that people from all political parties can agree on. Almost everyone, however, agrees that our state government is broken and is completely unable to address the issues surrounding the budget while ignoring the critical issues of the day such as energy, water, education and health services. Sacramento lawmakers continue to offer hundreds of bills that cater to special interests yet fail to address the real issues that face Del Norters or Californians. Often these bills are contradictory and when passed, create a lawyer’s dream case that can land in the courts for years. New state mandates are often imposed before the prior reforms have had a chance to work, and they typically give the state control over the details of services delivered at the community level. For school districts, Sacramento now wants to dictate the brand and type of cleaning supplies to be used in Gasquet Mountain School’s bathrooms. That gives you an idea of how much they want to micro-manage and take away local control. This top-down, centralized governance system is at the root of many of our problems as a state. Community government leaders no longer have the tools to set and fund community priorities and be held accountable to the voters for them. Moreover, the state provides neither adequate funding nor the flexibility in using state funding for effective community service delivery. Sacramento believes that what is good for Los Angeles is good for Crescent City.
For the last several years, we the voters have been told that the
latest ballot remedy would fix our budget problems for good, yet each
year the budget problems seem to get worse. The reason for the latest
defeat of Propositions 1A through 1E seems to be that people just don’t
trust state government to act in their best interest, and they are
right.
Each time the state gets into budget trouble, they borrow (steal) the funds from either school districts, counties or cities. Now they want to steal another $2 billion in property taxes from local governments to help balance their budget. These are monies that the state always finds an excuse not to pay back. Now they say they want to do that again. If they are successful, school districts, counties and cities will take budget hits that will most likely cripple the services they are mandated by the state to provide. Let us not forget that this means local governments will not have the funds to carry out the very programs that have been mandated by the state. The real losers will be children, the elderly, and the disabled. Poor children will suffer as the state eliminates health coverage for them. Every school-age child will suffer as we shorten the school year and cram more students into each classroom. The elderly will suffer as more hard-core prisoners are let loose from our prisons to burglarize and rob them. Every taxpayer will suffer as the state response to requests for services becomes untenable due to the firing of over 5,000 state employees. As Assembly Minority Leader Mike Villines says, “This is the year everything has fallen apart.” There is a point where we must say “enough is enough.” It’s called the tipping point. I believe that we have reached that point. We, the people, have the right to choose the form of government under which we shall live. It is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. In order to ensure that we have a state government that works, we need to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. This means we need to call a California Constitutional Convention. In July the California School Boards Association in conjunction with the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties will meet in Sacramento to discuss how we can overhaul state government so it works again. It’s time to rewrite the state constitution. It’s time to address and debate problems, proposed solutions and reforms to strengthen the governance of California. If we, the people, don’t do it who will? The legislature and governor have proven themselves incapable of doing the job, so we the people must show the way. I would hope that all Del Norters would support these efforts to help make California great again. Bob Berkowitz is a member of the Del Norte County/Unified School District and a member of the Board of Directors of the California School Boards Association. |
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