I don't generally like to post about California politics or the current budget crisis, because I know--and everyone else knows--exactly what the underlying problem is, and there's a limit to how many different ways you can point out that the government has been hijacked by an intransigent Republican minority. The California government is seriously flawed, and the reckoning is upon us.
Of course, the natural steps to take in fixing some serious procedural flaw with the government would be to rewrite the constitution. But as the Sacramento Bee's Dan Walters
points out, the same forces that prevent California from passing a budget would also prevent it from agreeing on a new constitution:
Fundamentally, however, a constitutional convention is only a process, not a product. And there isn't even any agreement on the process – how many delegates would be selected, how they would be chosen and how they would go about their work.The state constitution is silent on those issues, leaving it to an ideologically polarized Legislature to set the ground rules with a two-thirds vote required.
Some legislation calling for a convention or setting forth its procedures has already been introduced, which is a clue to the pitfalls of the process. If the Legislature is incapable of dealing with California's burning political issues, including the budget, how could we expect it to agree on how a constitutional convention would work – especially the partisan or ideological makeup of convention delegates?
Democrats would want a convention likely to embrace removing impediments to raising taxes, for instance, by containing a strong majority of their colleagues, while Republicans wouldn't go along with that – thus mirroring their essential conflict over the budget.
What all this basically means is that California has painted itself into a corner: every possible path to a fundamental change in the way the government works would need the approval of an overpowered and entrenched minority party. I only see two ways out: the first is that the state of affairs is allowed to proceed to utter crisis, causing such a tectonic shift in the political dynamics of the state that obstructionism becomes a liability for the Republicans. The second is that Republicans are somehow unscrupulously removed from their position of power, for instance via some gerrymandering scheme.
Neither of those options is very palatable--or likely. So I'm guessing that this crisis will go like the others: at the 11th hour some concession will be made to get the budget passed, the state will stagger onwards--and we will all find outselves in the same situation next year.
