California Leaders Urge Yet Another Reform Bid

SAN FRANCISCO - California has yet another high-profile forum to discuss reforms for the state's budget and governance process.

The majority leaders in each house of the Legislature last week announced a new Joint Select Committee on Reform, which is slated to meet through the fall and make proposals for lawmakers to take up when they return in January.

The idea behind the committee is that there are structural solutions to structural problems in the way the Legislature works, which contribute to the kind of gridlock that was epitomized by having three distinct series of budget negotiations within the last year. Each of these processes dragged on for weeks, while the state's finances become so precarious that it had to issue $2.6 billion in IOUs between July 2 and last Thursday, when the final such warrant was issued.

"The current system is not working for anybody," Senate President pro tempore Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said at last week's press conference announcing the panel.

The select committee will join a smorgasbord of groups that have been working on plans and proposals to reform the state government's stymied political processes.

They include California Forward, a foundation-funded, bipartisan reform effort; its proposals will probably set the framework for the new committee's agendas.

On another track, the Bay Area Council, a business lobbying group, has launched an effort to convene a constitutional convention, which has been aired at a series of town hall meetings across the state.

In the official blue-ribbon panel category, the 14 members of the California Commission on the 21st Century Economy are scheduled to deliver a plan for comprehensive changes to the state tax system by Sept. 20 - if they can overcome their ideological differences.

"I think it's a very helpful thing that organizations like California Forward and the Bay Area Council are touting reform and actually taking steps to take action themselves," Steinberg said. "But those of us in elective office have the obligation and frankly we have the opportunity to have what would be equal to our own constitutional convention, to take up those ideas that are right in front of us."

Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, appointed Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, and Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, as co-chairs. The other 18 members will be announced later.

Feuer said the time to act is now, citing the example of a 1990s constitutional reform committee, which was appointed during a budget crisis, then spent two years formulating recommendations only to see them largely ignored because the crisis had passed.

"We need to learn from that history," Feuer said. "We have a moment in time. We're going to act with urgency and act in a concrete way."

DeSaulnier chaired a Senate select committee on constitutional reform, which held informational meetings during the current session.

"I look at the next three months as a wonderful opportunity to really change California and to do it in a way that others have failed at," he said.

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