Be Governor

Posted: November 20, 2003

by GREGORY SANFORD

End the culture of bureaucratic gorging

Be Governor

A lot can be done without going to lawmakers or voters.

Gregory Sanford is a political writer living in Southern California.

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As California governor and as U.S. president, the most important thing Ronald Reagan did was reintroduce the people as players in the insiders’ political games in Sacramento and Washington. It would also be the most important thing Arnold Schwarzenegger could do. And he is positioned to do it. The questions are: Will he try? and How should he go about it?

The first question is key. Not only does the second depend on the first being answered yes, but answering the first yes is the first and most important step to bringing the people into the game. Just showing a sustained determination to represent Californians up and down the state will do more than any other single thing to force an opening of the too often self-absorbed clique that has run the state for so long.

The new governor can employ in this cause the considerable heft that comes with his dramatic election and the sense of upheaval and new possibilities it has created, his celebrity, his powerful personality, and the rare, intense, and, let us hope, not fleeting spotlight of public attention it all has brought to Sacramento.

If Governor Schwarzenegger is determined to represent the people, then here are a few suggestions on how he might go about doing so:

Talk in private the same way as in public. The political class dislikes even public pronouncements that recognize any interests beyond its own, but, when hearing them seems inescapable, it falls back on the assumption that they carry no weight, that they are “for public consumption” and will be forgotten behind closed doors. Governor Schwarzenegger can send a powerful message, one likely to stagger his listeners until they get used to it, simply by reiterating in private as well as in public that business as usual is over.

Act quickly and decisively where action does not require legislative or voter confirmation. Keep the pledge to rescind the tripling of the car tax “with a stroke of the pen.” Instruct the lawyers to stipulate that the Davis Administration energy contracts were negotiated under a conflict of interest and are therefore void. These actions, and others like them, will save the private economy large amounts of money, fueling the economic recovery upon which everything depends.

Use aggressively the discretionary authority this year’s budget and budget trailer bills (AB 1765, sec. 27, and AB 1756, sec. 56) give the governor to control considerable portions of state agencies’ budgets. This will show you mean business and will begin to bring spending under control, which will reassure your supporters, solidify your political mandate, and further stimulate the economy.

Aggressive use of these budget law provisions, and the vast array of administrative levers governors control or heavily influence, can tame, and reverse, the Davis- era spirit of ever-growing numbers of state employees and of routine cost overruns in everything the state does, all in the context of a culture of endless clamoring to burn through more taxpayer dollars, often without any real justification beyond the ingrained bureaucratic imperative that more is always better.

Set a new tone: less is better, efficiency is good, and success comes when the state gives money back to taxpayers saying, see: we did our jobs for less than you gave us. Why is that good? Because it is their money, not government’s; because it restores the tax base, without which government can do nothing, and, above all, because it affirms the proper relationship between the people and the state: government exists for public service, not bureaucratic gorging.

Overall, repeat this theme at every opportunity to sustain the public’s accurate perception that the battle is between responsible stewardship of its resources and out-of-control special interest politics and that the battle’s outcome will decide whether we restore prosperity and a state that works or succumb to a falling standard of living driven by bloated, dysfunctional government. A major help, by the way, in thus framing the issue will be Tom McClintock’s Bureaucracy Realignment and Closure Commission, which the state Senate recently voted to create (36 to 0) and which the Assembly is expected to approve as well.

Aggressive use of the governor’s office will set the stage for the tough battles within the Legislature and before the voters over changes in law — and, ultimately, the changes in office holders and control of the Legislature — that the governor cannot make on his own.