Our view: Advice to keep this mess from occurring again

The first inclination is to be simply transfixed as the smoke clears and the wreckage gradually comes into focus.

As far away as Del Norte County is from Sacramento, it’s hard to imagine a populace more affected than ours by the state government meltdown.

Those of us who work for the state — more than 1,500 at Pelican Bay State Prison alone — are now dealing with 15 percent pay cuts and impending layoffs.

Those of us who depend on social services funded by the state — and there are many in our relatively poor community — face the loss of critical aid as more impacts of budget cuts filter down.

Then there are the college students who will pay higher tuition and fees to attend more crowded classes — if they can even enroll in the classes they need as the higher education system shrinks.

Maybe you don’t fall into any of these categories, but you still live in a community whose economy has been weakened by what’s happened in Sacramento.

Yes, it’s quite a train wreck, but we’ve got to do more than stare at the spectacle. Just like with any mishap in life, we need a twofold response: 1) analyze what went wrong and how to avoid it happening again, and 2) figure out what we have to do right now to start extracting ourselves from the mess, even as its ramifications continue to unfold.

Fixing California’s government is of course a statewide task, but here are some suggestions from the far north:

• The plunge in state government revenue can be blamed on the dramatic economic downturn, but if Sacramento hadn’t spent every dollar it could get its hands on during the good times on perpetual services, the bad times wouldn’t be so painful. Make fiscal restraint the standard operating procedure, not just a response to a catastrophe.

• Voters should stop approving initiatives that dictate certain spending priorities, which often conflict with other voter-approved initiatives. After the circus that just played out in Sacramento, it’s admittedly hard to trust those folks with the entire budgeting process, but we have to quit tying their hands by legislating from the ballot box. Change the system to make it harder to get spending initiatives on the ballot.

• Drop the requirement of a two-third’s majority needed to pass a budget. This allowed minority Republican legislators to become little more than obstructionists, tying up the process for months while they adhered to a no-new-taxes mantra when more creative solutions blending spending cuts and revenue enhancements were needed. Let a simple majority rule, and if you don’t like the results, change the majority — that’s the proper role for voters.

• Beware of promoting movie stars to the governor’s mansion. Voters threw Gray Davis out of office partially because of a money mess, but Arnold Schwarzenegger has presided over a bigger one.

Despite dancing in both political camps from time to time, he failed as a consensus-builder when we most needed one. Then he mugged for a YouTube video with a knife, making a joke of the budget cuts that will bring so much pain. Next time, let’s elect a grown-up.

It’ll take time and a bipartisan determination seemingly lacking in our current leaders to set things aright in Sacramento. Meanwhile, it’s time to roll up our sleeves here in Del Norte County and figure out how we can best take care of our own with less help from the state. Stay tuned.