Three peas in a pod

If you don’t like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — and judging by his 22% approval rating, most Californians don’t — chances are good that you’re not going to like Meg Whitman or Jerry Brown either. Although the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates have some differing views on the causes and cures for California’s financial problems, most of their proposed fixes already have been suggested or tried by the incumbent.

Brown recently unveiled a detailed list of policies for balancing the state budget, a blueprint that looked strikingly familiar not only because it resembles past policy initiatives from Schwarzenegger but because it reveals a surprising swath of common ground with Whitman. For example, Brown promises to appoint a team of experts to identify inefficiencies in state government and programs that should be considered low priorities for funding. Whitman too says she will appoint a commission to identify waste and inefficiency, and to restructure government to reduce the number of duplicative boards and commissions.

Whether it’s Brown or Whitman who ends up in the governor’s office, we can save him or her some work: Rather than appoint a new commission, dig around for Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review report (there’s probably a copy propping up a desk leg somewhere). The report is the result of a five-month study by a panel of volunteers that recommended, among other things, eliminating 118 boards and commissions and cutting 12,000 government jobs, with an estimated savings of $32 billion over five years. Schwarzenegger tried to implement assorted recommendations on a piecemeal basis but hit a wall of political opposition and eventually gave up on most of them.

Brown and Whitman also agree that pensions for government workers must be reformed. Both acknowledge that the way to get this done is to create a two-tier system, with current employees keeping their benefits while newly hired workers get a less generous deal. They differ on how much less generous: Brown suggests raising the retirement age at which employees qualify for full benefits from 55 to 60, while Whitman would raise it to 65. Brown would raise employee contributions to pension plans, while Whitman wants to replace pensions entirely with 401(k) plans.

Schwarzenegger announced his two-tier pension plan in 2005; it went nowhere. As his term wanes, he has made some progress in redefining benefits, wresting concessions in several union contracts in recent months. But getting public employee unions to agree to a two-tier system would take an extraordinary feat of negotiation.

Brown and Whitman are unified when it comes to prisons: Both want to reduce prison healthcare costs. So does Schwarzenegger, but he is powerless to do so because the prison health system is overseen by a court-appointed federal receiver, not the governor. Brown and Whitman also say they want more money from the federal government to compensate the state for the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants. Schwarzenegger too promised to wrest more money from Washington. “By the time I’m done with this whole thing, I will not be known as the Terminator. I will be known as the Collectinator,” Schwarzenegger boasted on Fox News in 2003. But the Bush administration turned a deaf ear to his pleas for funds, and President Obama has done the same.

Brown and Whitman also say they want to upgrade the technology used by state agencies to make them more efficient (neither mentions how he or she would pay for it), and they both want to streamline burdensome state regulations. Schwarzenegger has been there, tried that.

Of course, it isn’t fair to imply that Brown, Whitman and Schwarzenegger have identical policies. Brown is more liberal than Schwarzenegger, and Whitman is more conservative. Yet, interestingly, even when Brown and Whitman diverge, they often do so in the direction of Schwarzenegger. For example, Brown wants to create a rainy-day reserve fund, setting aside taxpayer money during budget surplus years to create a cushion during lean years, and to restructure the state’s entire taxation system. Those have been key goals of Schwarzenegger’s. Whitman, meanwhile, wants to impose a budget cap so that state spending can only rise if California’s gross domestic product rises too. Such a spending cap is among Schwarzenegger’s most fervent desires. Brown emphasizes cracking heads in the Legislature to get a budget passed on time, while Whitman focuses on cracking down on government waste, fraud and abuse, and on making the lottery more profitable. Schwarzenegger has fought hard to accomplish all these things, with little to show for it.

The two candidates do have some new ideas. Whitman aims to make the Legislature a part-time body, eliminate the state capital gains tax, slash the state workforce by 40,000 employees and dramatically reduce the welfare rolls. Schwarzenegger has avoided such radical promises (perhaps because even the Collectinator couldn’t keep a straight face making such unrealistic proposals). Brown wants to go after companies that cheat on their taxes and “level with the people and present an honest budget without the smoke and mirrors.” We tried to write that last sentence without cracking a smile but couldn’t pull it off.

So what do we take away from all this? Surely there is more to the similarities among Brown, Whitman and Schwarzenegger than that they all dip from the same shallow pool of campaign consultants (although they do). If they have commonalities, it’s because many of their proposed reforms have long been identified as necessary steps to improve the state’s fiscal health and governance. The problem, of course, is getting them done, which Schwarzenegger largely failed at over the course of seven years in office.

It’s not that these reforms are impossible to achieve; it’s just very hard. Politicians love to make multitudinous promises they know they can’t keep, but we’d rather see a candidate commit to two or three top reform priorities, which is realistically about all a governor is likely to accomplish in a single term, and be as tenacious and stubborn as an aging donkey — or, if you prefer, as ferocious as a mama grizzly — until they’re done. That means not getting frustrated and checking out when things get hard, like the no-longer-loved incumbent.