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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Department: January 2007
Free agent
Not likely to be a political candidate again, Arnold can really make a difference
Story by Tony Quinn
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger begins his second term as governor, or first full term, having given voters very little idea what he plans to do over the next four years. He ran a masterful campaign for re-election, but not one that was very illuminating as to his future plans.
Here are some things he might want to think about in the new year. A high priority is certainly going to be some kind of healthcare reform to help cover the millions of uninsured Californians whose healthcare is ultimately paid for by business and individuals through higher insurance premiums.
Schwarzenegger has brought two experts on board to develop the administration’s healthcare proposals. He has expressed some interest in the Massachusetts healthcare plan that requires everyone to have health insurance.
But the same Democratic Legislature that sent him a universal healthcare bill he vetoed last year is still here, and State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, plans to re-introduce her bill establishing a single-payer, government-run healthcare system.
Schwarzenegger won’t go for that. Can he work out a compromise with the Legislature and pass a bill as dramatic as the global-warming compromise he managed in 2006? That will be the first big test for the administration.
The budget is always a big issue, but slowly we are reducing the deficit by the natural growth of revenues. Schwarzenegger was helped in the election by the fact that voters turned down every tax-increase proposal on the June and November ballots.
The results show that the people distrust government to spend their tax money wisely, so they refuse to give it any more revenue. Even efforts to raise taxes on supposedly unpopular industries like tobacco and oil failed. The 2006 elections were a vote against tax increases per se, not just a vote against increasing specific taxes. There is no tax increase the voters of California are prepared to endorse at this time.
The effect in 2007 will be to drive policy-making toward the center. There is no indication voters want the Legislature to move in a more liberal direction — or the governor to move in a more conservative direction. This opens the door to the possibility that the governor could focus on some long-overdue issues relating to how well government works, and do it in a bipartisan manner.
Let’s start with redistricting reform. In the 2005 special election, the governor made this one of his government-reform ballot measures. However, his proposal called for immediate elections and only had Republican support. Democrats cried power grab and spent millions to sink his proposal.
But a Public Policy Institute of California poll last year shows the idea is still popular with voters. Almost 60 percent of California voters favor a redistricting reform that would have an independent citizens commission draw district lines for the next decade, rather than the Legislature. This underscores voter unhappiness with legislative elections that never result in any changes.
Past redistricting-reform ballot measures all suffered from the same defect: Voters viewed them as partisan power grabs. For Schwarzenegger to succeed with a new reform he will need to show real bipartisan support. He should work together with like-minded reformers on both sides of the aisle to put a reform on the ballot for 2008. That would be a step in the direction of doing what the voters in this election said they want: making government work in a bipartisan way.
Schwarzenegger is in a rare position that no recent governor has been in: he cannot run for another term as governor and he cannot run for president. The reality is that he will most likely never be a political candidate again, and this gives him a unique advantage in spending the political capital he has amassed on things that will really make a difference in how government works.
Schwarzenegger ran on reform in the 2003 recall election, but we heard little about it in the 2006 campaign. In 2004 he promised to “blow up the boxes” that keep government inefficient. That need remains unfulfilled. His initial effort to reshape things, the Performance Review Commission, was a notable failure. This should be a long-term project for his second term.
Late in Gov. Pete Wilson’s second term he appointed a California Constitutional Revision Commission, but critics complained that its proposals would have made it easier to raise taxes, and the Legislature ignored its recommendations.
We know the voters will not accept more taxes and do not want to make it easier to raise taxes. But a new Constitutional Revision Commission that stays away from tax increases might find broad support if it focuses on restoring the public’s confidence in how government operates.
These ideas are just the beginning. But if the newly empowered Gov. Schwarzenegger focuses his attention on these important structural reforms, the next four years could be a time of astounding progress for the people of California.
