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Just when it seemed our leaders had done the ultimate job of botching their responsibility to pay for state government, along comes a still-higher level of ineptitude.
Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal to close almost all state parks is just plain dumb. We could almost forgive him if this fell into the typical cynical realm of making citizens suffer by cutting popular services so that next time they’ll be more supportive of proposed tax increases. But in a remote area such as Del Norte County that is heavily dependent on tourism, a call to close not some of our state parks but all of them amounts to political terrorism on the part of the Terminator.
These are financially desperate times in Sacramento. State leaders spent too much when the treasury was flush, and now revenues are way below what’s needed to support our current level of services and bureaucracy. The governor and legislators have been absolutely hapless in dealing with this situation, first going months past their deadline for adopting a budget, then presenting voters with a hopelessly complicated combination of propositions that wouldn’t have fixed the problem anyway.
Perhaps voters do bear some of the blame for the state’s fiscal crisis,
not because they shot down the May 19 propositions but because they’ve
approved a series of other measures over the years requiring spending
on specific services and thus complicating the budget situation in lean
times. But they can only vote on what is placed before them on ballots.
Their leaders at the Capitol, on the other hand, wield the power to make adjustments on the fly. They’ve misused that power, their political partisanship preventing what was obviously needed: a clear-cut combination of spending reductions and revenue enhancements based on real-world economics rather than hopes of finding new places to borrow money. Cuts are needed in state spending. Painful cuts. And frankly, Del Norte County can expect to take a disproportionately heavy hit. After all, we’ve got a lot of state employees who as of today face the prospect of a 5 percent pay cut in addition to two unpaid furlough days per month. And we’ve got a lot of residents dependent on social services that seem to be the juiciest targets for those waving the budget axes in Sacramento. The governor looks to go beyond cutting our payroll and reducing services to our neediest residents. He now proposes squelching our ability to help ourselves as we attempt to nurture our promising tourism industry. Close all of the redwoods state parks? He might as well put up a sign on U.S. Highway 199 directing all coast-bound travelers north to Oregon. Our local parks officials have diplomatically noted that the proposal is not cast in stone but rather an item for public debate. Steve Chaney, the Redwood National Park superintendent, has even raised the possibility that the federal government might be of some assistance because of the unique cooperative relationship that exists in what is known as the Redwood State and National Parks. This would be especially important in Del Norte, where almost all the redwoods are in state parks, not the national park. The early speculation is that, while some state parks will be closed, Schwarzenegger’s proposal will be watered down through the political process. But why should we have any faith in a political process that has served us so poorly to this point? If the governor wanted California’s fiscal crisis to garner still more national and international attention, he has succeeded. A proposal to shut down almost all of our world-class park system is bound to generate media coverage everywhere. Some people who plan their vacations well in advance are probably removing the Golden State from their list of prospects even as you read this. We’ve suffered from our state leaders’ ham-handed politics for months. Now it’s degenerated into a suicidal form of cannibalism. |