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Health & Fitness

California at the Tipping Point

I recently had occasion to watch a brief, 12.5-minute, video published at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. I strongly encourage readers to view the video I have linked here in its entirety before reading this column or, in any case, before choosing to offer comment.

The video presentation is, I think, fairly unique in that it not only points out some of California’s major challenges (I consider them to be more akin to symptoms) and their causes but then also suggests some reasonable solutions.

So many people and groups these days are all too anxious to complain but all too reluctant to offer workable solutions to the problems they perceive.

One of the symptoms mentioned in the video is "gridlocked lawmakers". If this were ever true, California voters can be said to have completely "solved" this challenge in its November 2012 general election, when it handed the Democrat party super-majorities in both houses in Sacramento.

The Democrat party has held effective control over California's state government for about four decades but this new super-majority, coupled with concurrent Democrat control of the Executive branch, effectively ended any Republican resistance that may have existed previously. Elected Republicans in Sacramento now need not even be included in legislative discussions there, let alone consulted or their ideas adopted.

Despite predominantly liberal control in Sacramento for almost half a century, California's challenges persist and have, in most cases, worsened.

City Journal's video addresses major challenges in various areas of public policy and public administration throughout California and makes it clear that but for the State's monstrous economy (currently 9th in the world but which not long ago was 6th) California would likely have folded long ago.

One area in which the video attributes major challenges for California is that of public employee unions (PEUs). I disagree that PEUs are the sole cause of the challenges in which they are involved. PEU's have simply become a convenient target for taxpayer frustration. That this is the case becomes more understandable when one perceives the underlying disease of which, I believe, all of the other challenges the video mentions serve as symptoms.

I believe that all employees, whether public or private sector, have a right to bargain for the best wages and working conditions they can receive from their employers. They can bargain either individually or collectively through a union or some other form of collective bargaining entity.

A majority of union members in the country, including California, now work in the public sector. There are many reasons for this but the fact remains that public sector workers have no less a right to voluntary union membership than anyone else. All these public employees do is pay someone else (through their dues) to bargain for wages and working conditions on their behalf.

But who do these PEUs bargain with?

Those on the other side of the table (ostensibly bargaining on the taxpayers' behalf) are elected and appointed government officials and it is they, and not the PEU's who have a responsibility to represent the State's taxpayers.

Thus, in California, it is not the public employees who create the challenge of excessive pay or benefits, it is the elected and appointed government representatives on the other side of the bargaining table who do so, for it is they who ultimately grant the PEU's contract requests.

Despite this truth, California taxpayers continually demonize public sector workers and their unions on the one hand, while, on the other, repeatedly elect and re-elect the very same sorts of people to represent them at the bargaining table with these unions.

It is the elected and appointed government officials' duty to sometimes say "no", make reasonable counter-offers and, in so doing, keep public sector labor costs under control. Yet these officials consistently fail to do so and California voters continue to elect and re-elect them.

The underlying disease:

Thus we come at last to what I believe to be the true challenge in California. The actual "disease", of which all of the challenges mentioned in the video are but symptoms: A growing apathy on the part of productive people in California to participate in their State and local governments in an active and constructive manner.

Fewer and fewer adult California residents are eligible to vote. Fewer and fewer of those who are eligible to vote bother to register to do so. Fewer and fewer of those who are registered to vote, bother to participate in their state and local elections. Fewer and fewer of those who participate in California elections do so in a fully intelligent manner, based upon readily available facts and historical experience.

More and more California voters seem to allow incumbency, bumper-sticker slogans, and 30-second sound bytes rather than basic research and critical thinking to inform their decisions at the polls. Thus it is ultimately the majority of voters in California who can thank themselves for the many and persistent challenges California faces.

It is the majority of California voters who elect and re-elect the government representatives who have driven these public policy challenges and it is the majority of voters who steadfastly refuse to properly monitor their government or to remove those elected officials, by recall, who continuously and repeatedly fail to correct the challenges.

I believe the results of increasing voter ignorance and apathy in California over the past several decades have become as obvious as they are tragic and I think City Journal's video illustrates these results quite well.

Now that they, and I, have done so, California, what do you plan to do about it? I welcome your questions, comments and respectful discussion.


Author John B. Greet is a Long Beach, California native, a retired public safety employee, a graduate student in Public Administration, and currently living in the Pacific Northwest.

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