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California’s Constitutional Convention Town Halls

18 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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California, california state, california state constitutional convention, constitution, convention, courage campaign, full-circle-fund, jim wunderman, repair california, repaircalifornia.org, san francisco, www.repaircalifornia.org

e2.JPGWHEN motley crew political organizations from all over the state and political spectrum bring traveling town hall meetings to San Francisco, the civic minded would be well-advised to attend. Repair California is one of these crews, and last Tuesday they brought their push for a limited Constitutional Convention to The City by the Bay.

Composed of such seemingly disparate groups as The Bay Area Council, a business led-public policy organization, the Full-Circle-Fund and the Courage Campaign, an education advocacy group and progressive grassroots organization respectively, Repair California makes for an odd bird. Nevertheless, despite the very real differences between the interests these groups represent, two powerful forces have conspired to forge their unity: the complete collapse of California’s government and the strategic conviction that the situation in California has become so perilous they are willing to bet their time, energy, and yes, money, on the proposition that a representative sample of average Californians can do better.

At the risk of digression the following must be said. Tuesday night’s California Constitutional Convention Town Hall filled the PG&E auditorium to capacity and yet was about as anarchic as a Norman Rockwell painting (Complete video of the event here and here). This impression would have gone completely unnoticed if not for the rather caustic health care town halls currently underway across the country. The speakers addressed the enormity of the task before them with an eloquence matched only by the dignity of the evening’s participants, young and old, liberal and conservative, as they lined up to ask what were almost without exception well-thought-out insightful questions. This sentiment was echoed by Peter Schrag, former editor of the Sacramento Bee and longtime chronicler of California’s woes, who wrote on the California Progress Report, “What was most striking about the Repair California group and the people who’ve come to their meetings is that they seem both so ordinary and yet so thoughtful.” One couldn’t escape feeling it. This is the way town halls are supposed to go.

First at the podium was the Full Circle Fund’s Jeff Camp and his terribly depressing presentation on California’s public education over the past three decades. The cliff notes history of California’s public schools goes something like this. Until the 1960’s schools were funded almost exclusively through property tax revenues. “This worked great…” deadpanned Camp, “for wealthy communities”. The US Supreme Court eventually found this system violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and school funding was modified to be more equitable. Years later, proposition 13 completely reversed this system by amending the state constitution so that all property tax dollars would go first to Sacramento (and put through the legislative sausage making process) and then distributed back to the locals from whose pockets the money originally came. It should come as no surprise that, over time, fewer and fewer dollars were coming back. The challenge for Convention delegates would be to ensure that more powers of the purse are devolved back to local governments without leaving schools in poor neighborhoods to completely fend for themselves.

Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, immediately began by recognizing that the same type of dire presentation on California’s schools could be done for the state’s responsibilities across the board: water, prisons, transportation, etc. After speaking at nearly all of these events, Wunderman spends little time describing the scope of the failure, apparently confident that Californians don’t need a weatherman to tell them its raining. Wunderman instead focuses his message not on why California should be reformed, but why a Constitutional Convention would be the best way to do it.
There are three ways to reform California’s government: through the legislature, through the ballot initiative, and through a Constitutional Convention. The first method, the “insider” strategy, has been completely disregarded by nearly everyone; the capitol is far too polarized to agree on any sort of meaningful reform, and politicians have precious few incentives to come to compromises.

The second option, the ballot, is deeply flawed for at least one big reason. California’s government is so broken, its problems so numerous, it would take “Proposition A-Z” to fix. Such a campaign would be prohibitively expensive, and interest groups which benefit from the status-quo could easily pick them off one-by-one. That leaves the Convention…
As of this moment Californians do not have the right to call for a Constitutional Convention. Only the legislature, through a 2/3 vote, can propose one. When you think about it, it’s a rather glaring deficiency for a system that supposes the people are the government. Repair California has therefore developed a “offer-voters-power-and-challenge-them-to-seize-it” strategy to push for two ballot initiatives: one to amend the constitution to give people the power to call a convention, and another to actually call the thing.

Stephen Hill, director of the Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation, described the proposed idea of choosing delegates via a representative sample of Californians selected at random from a master list built from jury pools, the DMV, and voter registrations. “One thing I’d like to say about these citizen bodies is that they’re actually being used across the United States”. Hill referred specifically to the enormous New Orleans citizen-delegation which was convened to break through a political stalemate over the city’s post-Katrina rebuilding plans. The delegation was comprised of 4,000 people spread over 21 cities and linked by every facet of modern networking technology. “When you read about what occurred, it is truly impressive because they were able to find common ground”. Hill explained the surprising successes of this citizen-delegate model to the fact that delegates do not bring self-interest tainted by the partisanship and incumbency. “What you find is that when average people come together they check their partisanship at the door.”

Progressive activists, good-government watch-dogs, and business leaders…the breadth of Repair California’s coalition, already large, promises to become a colossus. And it better be, because the task is equally enormous. While California continues to loose its edge, you can bet that someone in Sacramento is winning big, and this entity is not going to go quietly into the night. As Schrag put it “The chore isn’t just to restructure the state’s dysfunctional system of government, but, as [Repair California] knows, to re-create citizenship in a state that now has much too little of it.” Such language tends to make Sacramento shudder. All the more reason to keep repeating it.

The only thing we have to fear is the status-quo

15 Wednesday Jul 2009

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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california constitutional convention, california politics, california state, consti, constitution, constitutional convention, government reform, reform, repa, repair, repair california, repaircalifornia.org, revolution

AS Californians begin demanding fundamental reforms to their state government, business-as-usual hunkers for a fight.

califailnia

Benjamin Franklin was said to have quipped that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result was the definition of insanity. Dr. Franklin, welcome to Sacramento. Where despite the shame, humiliation, and human suffering caused by California’s horrific budget catastrophe, proponents of doing the same thing have unleashed a campaign of fear against convening a Constitutional Convention, and in doing so have rushed to the defense of the status quo.

In a June 18 Op-Ed appearing in the Capitol Weekly, a union official representing the State Building & Construction Trades Council essentially called on Californians to fear their neighbors.

“Think about the person you know – a relative, friend, neighbor, colleague – whom you disagree with the most. That person may well be in a jury pool and could be selected. Is that the person you want spending the next several months…deciding how California should be run?”

This is not an argument against a Constitutional Convention, its an attack on the entire pantheon of American values, from trial by jury to universal suffrage.

And yet, this is only slightly more hysterical than the rationale given by a coalition of 6 taxpayer groups opposing a Constitutional Convention because of “fears that the process can and will be hijacked” by special interests, oblivious to the fact that special interests rule the entire roost right now.

While it is clear that those on the far-left and far-right fear a Constitutional Convention, and believe you should fear one too, their rationale is not so clear. For example, are they afraid that citizen guided reforms will make California’s schools the worst in the nation? They already are. Do they fear pan-generational neglect of our water infrastructure? That has already happened. Are they afraid that millions of poor children will suddenly go without healthcare? We’re already there. That our beloved state parks will close? That our prisons overflow? Done and done.

Just last week a colleague of mine gave a teary-eyed account of the real cost of the ruined California government. Driving with his two small children, they passed a elementary school weighted down with chains and shackles. The marquis read:

“Sorry, no summer school. Budget cuts. Have a great summer.”

As we approach the moment of truth, we expect the fear mongering will only increase. This is unfortunate because history teaches us that when you give citizens the responsibility to reform their government, the American people rarely disappoint.

When Illinois voters called for a Convention in 1968, delegates drafted a short document that established basic rights, established the “Home Rule” principle that gave cities and counties more control over their own resources, and created what is all-around considered to be a model constitution.

Likewise, Michigan held a Constitutional Convention in 1963 that brought it into the modern era. Hawaii alone has convened two Con Cons since 1960. All told, there have been 232 State Con Cons in US history. In each of these and other states, Constitutional Conventions are regularly debated on the merits of the moment and by the facts on the ground, not by fear, mistrust, and misinformation.

During the 1963 Michigan Con Con Wayne State teamed up with Michigan State University to produce what has since become a classic black and white documentary about American democracy. At the closing moments of “Michigan Can Lead the Way”, the narrator summarizes the experiment:

“Perfection is never an outcome of human enterprise. There had been fears the convention would be too conservative; fears that it would be too liberal; fears that it would be racked by politics…Pro-labor or pro-farmer or pro-business…Favoring the present, trapped in the past, lost in the future. The convention had been all of these, it was not an assemblage of angels. It was a convention of men and women. Taking the best it could agree on for our time and for our people…This was the process. Sometimes calm, sometimes not so calm. Either way, it was the people’s way. It was the way of a free democracy.”

For California, doing nothing and expecting different results is the worst option of all. And defending the status quo is not only scary, it’s insane.

The Campaign Begins

03 Wednesday Jun 2009

Posted by Adrian Covert in Readings

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California, california state constitutional convention, jim wunderman, reform, repair california, repaircalifornia.org, revolution, www.repaircalifornia.org

photo

“The current system neither has nor deserves advocates.”

-James Madison on the US Government under the Articles of Confederation

On Wednesday, May 19, concerned citizens from across the state formally unveiled a plan to repair California’s broken system of government by calling for a State Constitutional Convention. Since the announcement, our in-box and website have been flooded with support from across the political spectrum and the campaign has received valuable, high-profile media coverage.

The effort was on the front page of the New York Times, was given an official endorsement of the Los Angeles Times, and thanks to some intrepid bloggers, we found out that almost all of the candidates for Governor have endorsed the Constitutional Convention. (This follows a great story in The Economist, which was published in more than 200 countries)

Last week’s press conference brought together a politically diverse group of supporters to call for fundamental reform. A special thanks to Democratic State Senator Mark DeSaulnier and Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande, who agreed to try to place two propositions on the ballot through the power of the legislature. While they have a near impossible task, we all appreciate their patriotism. If they are unable to succeed, we will use the initiative process to convene a Constitutional Convention.

If you have not already done so, be sure to visit our newly revamped website at www.RepairCalifornia.org . There, you can locate events near you, access multimedia, host a meeting, and view recent media coverage. In addition, you can also join our ever-growing facebook cause, Repair California: Call a State Constitutional Convention. There, you can contact and share ideas with other supporters, comment on popular threads, and suggest links. Be sure to invite your freinds to help this campaign go viral.

Again, this campaign would not be possible without the dedication and concern of regular Californians. Check often for updates, and stay-tuned for further notices on this historic campaign.

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