The ‘Problem’ Turns Out to Be the Solution : Government: Under attack and underfunded, our public institutions provided the heroics after the Bay Area quake.

Responding to criticism of the Deukmejian Administration’s earthquake preparedness policies, the governor’s press secretary said it was “shameful” to talk politics in a time of disaster.

But politics is central when the public sector is put so rigorously to the test. What is shameful has been the long-term, unrelenting ideological attack on the very public institutions on which our health and prosperity so clearly depend.

That dependence was never more obvious than last week in Northern California. The test of our government went beyond the obvious emergency responses such as police and fire. Transit was particularly heroic. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District quickly became the vital heart of the transportation system, while buses and ferries rescued the stranded and geared up for a commuter crunch. Transit systems that have long been criticized instead turn out to be critical to our economy in the light of bridge and highway collapses. The usually invisible corps of building inspectors, public-works engineers and water-district workers was also out in force struggling with broken buildings, roads, sewers and water mains. And, of course, the disasters on the highways put the state Department of Transportation at center stage.

In spite of years of austerity, Northern California’s public sector has performed well so far--with the exception of highways. California’s progressive-era legacy of a relatively competent, reasonably paid and generally honest government has not been lost; those building inspectors, bus drivers and highway maintenance workers we like to complain about turn out to be vital to our safety. In New York, a freeway collapse would have stemmed from a contracting scandal. Here, the scandal is ideological--an anti-tax, anti-government ideology that has denied adequate funding for vital public needs.

For 11 years since Proposition 13 generated a political earthquake and slashed public funding, California conservatives have maligned government as “the problem, not the solution.” Local government in particular has borne the brunt of spending cuts. Fortunately, the locals have muddled through. Where would Northern California be now without a relatively effective, honest and competent set of public institutions? The private and nonprofit sectors certainly pitched in, but the heaviest responsibilities fall on the mayors, supervisors and city and county managers.

President Bush promoted another version of the same false ideology by stating, before even setting foot in California, “Thank God for the volunteers.” Actually, thank God (or progressive Bay Area citizens) that a government that has been attacked for years is competent enough to utilize those volunteers while responding to a myriad of problems. Nor does Sen. Pete Wilson seem to understand when he proclaims the problem of the collapsed Nimitz Freeway to be technological, not fiscal: If he wants to be governor, he better learn that having the right technology is useless unless you’re willing to pay to put it in place.

Fortunately, California voters will soon have the opportunity to shed two of the legacies of the anti-government ideology that have compounded the problems of the quake. One is the state spending limit, which in its absurd current form requires that emergency spending incurred beyond the limit be paid back by service cuts in future years, effectively denying real spending increases even for emergencies. The other is a low gas tax that places California 50th among states in our highway funding effort, making sure that freeway safety, among other needs, receives short shrift.

A measure heading for the June ballot corrects the inflexible and outdated spending limit, including its harmful emergency provisions, while permitting a gas-tax increase. The Legislature and governor knew that this increase was necessary, but the spending limit did not permit it. Now, in a special session, the Legislature should enact a temporary emergency increase in the gas tax to resolve the immediate uncertainty in highway funding. Not incidentally, such an action will improve the chance of passage of the measure concerning the spending limit by giving voters the opportunity to ratify a gas tax already in place.

Beyond that, the quake should provide the occasion for a reaffirmation of the traditional California relationship between healthy public and healthy private sectors. Our health and prosperity depend on public investment and private investment taken together, but the public side of the equation has been ignored for too long. That’s obvious when a bridge and highway go down and no one can get to work. It’s less obvious when our human and physical infrastructure decay slowly, but it’s no less true. The adequacy of our underfinanced local institutions will be sorely taxed in coming months. We might even consider giving them some more resources to work with.