League moving into a new year

The League of Women Voters of San Francisco held its annual meeting yesterday to approve plans for the coming year and to elect new members to the Board. For more information about plans and directions, check the website www.lwvsf.org during the coming weeks to see our our plans for activities and new directions. After the business meeting, the featured speaker was Robert Cruickshank, the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign, which is gathering support for a new California Constitutional Convention to solve some of the many problems facing our state. Robert talked enthusiastically about the possibilityof the people of California getting together to change the dysfunctional system in Sacramento and improve life for all Californians. There are several websites you can follow to keep up with what is happening in the movement for a Constitutional Convention. One is Repair California and another is the webiste Calitics for which Robert is one of the editors. The future looks exciting, so be sure to keep up.

Smiling through the gloom

The state of the state of California has become such a source of humor to the rest of the country that we find ourselves mentioned everywhere we look. The idea of the largest state in the country driving itself into bankruptcy strikes outsiders as funny, although it's not very funny to many who live here. Joel Stein, writing in Time magazine, is a resident of california, but he cannot resist pointing out the folly of our endless voting for initiatives most people can't understand. Asking voters to determine how much we should spend on a high-speed rail system or a hospital bond may have seemed like a good idea once, but it is not working out the way it was planned in 1911. Stein joins a long list of writers, politicians and businesspeople in suggesting that it's time to look at our initiative system with a view to revising it. We all want to strengthen democracy, but making decisions on the basis of ad campaigns is not the way to do it.

Only temporary?

Castro Street and much of the city was alive with protest last night after the California Supreme Court decision to uphold Prop 8 was announced. The proposition, passed by a small majority of voters, rescinded the right of same-sex marriage in the state, while at the same time upholding the validity of thousands of same-sex marriages performed before November 2008. Today this decision is making headlines all over the country and has been the subject of an editorial in the N.Y. Times. Despite the high emotion shown by both supporters and opponents of Prop 8, the underlying question of making changes to the state constitution is perhaps the most important issue to emerge from the case. The California constitution has been amended more than 500 times, making changes both trivial and major to the document. What kind of a constitution needs constant tinkering over the years? Surely one of the most important lessons learned from this case is that it's time to hold a constitutional convention and take a long, rational look at howthe state wants to govern itself. The opponents of Prop 8 are surely right that the set-back yesterday is only temporary, but the weakness in our constitutional procedures will be enduring unless we do something about them, and do it soon.

Is California leading the nation to chaos?

From the tranquil green campus of Princeton University, Paul Krugman today writes about the dire state of California. Even though Californians have been making bitter jokes about how the state has lost its way, it is chilling to know that on the other side of the continent a leading economist thinks that if California really still is "where the future happens first" then "God help America". Krugman is worried because the political system in our state simply is not functioning. He points to Prop 13 as the ballot measure that started the trend toward unworkable budgets and an unstable government. Our dependence on income tax to fund almost all government functions leaves us vulnerable to every swing in the economy. And what are we doing about it? So far not much. Everyone knows we need changes in Prop 13 to enable us to make property taxes more equitable. We need to stop allowing a minority of lawmakers to hold our budget process hostage to the need for a two/thirds majority. As citizens we need to take responsibility for supporting change. It's time for every one of us to support the call for a Constitutional Convention and to hold our lawmakers accountable for their decisions. The longer we wait the worse the world will be for our children and grandchildren.