Excerpts From the Governor’s Inaugural Remarks

We meet today to celebrate the people’s sovereignty, as old as California itself, and to confront their problems, as fresh as the morning headlines.

It is a day for symbolism, and a day for substance. For long after the rituals of inauguration fade from memory, each of us will be held accountable for the oath we take and the vision we offer.

I hope you will permit me a personal note on this very public occasion. A quarter of a century ago, I first climbed these steps, and with George Deukmejian, Willie Brown and David Roberti, proudly took my seat upon Ronald Reagan’s inaugural platform. I’m proud and grateful to return today to give my own message. And I’m eager to undertake with those on this platform what I hope will be a journey of shared values, a common pursuit of uncommonly important goals. . . .

For state government to function at all, it must be credible. The people of California have entrusted us to conduct their government through the decade of the 1990s. We are faced with the same choice as those Capitol planners of the ‘70s. If we are not to destroy the credibility of state government, we must restore it.

And to do that, we must make government work.

It is no secret what the people of California want from state government, from those of us on this platform. . . .

They--as you--are worried and they want change.

You want drug dealers gone from your kids’ schools and parks.

You want education designed for the age of computer chips, not Mr. Chips.

You want an economy that will offer you the dignity of providing for your families and doing something useful each day.

You want affordable car insurance and health care.

You want to secure the spirituality of Big Sur, and safeguard cathedrals of redwoods that were already old at the time of Christ.

And you want and deserve an end of government in gridlock, and to the annual trench warfare that passes for a budget process.

We on this platform are the people’s agents. To us you have delegated authority to enact laws and to regulate conduct, and above all, to make needed change.

We have a charter to bring all the change required to realize the full promise of our state, to allow California to be all that it can be.

The change California needs ought not to be imposed by federal mandate or judge’s orders or ballot-box budgeting by initiative. . . .

The world has been drawn to California since even before John Charles Fremont fell in love with its rugged beauty while mapping mountain passes and exploring the countryside around what is today, Sacramento. General Fremont helped free California from the grip of the Spanish dons, and he was rewarded with the new state’s first seat in the U.S. Senate, and a place in legend as “the California pathfinder.” . . .

Now our generation must find a path to California’s future. At the dawn of the new year, we witness a world where walls crumble and tyrannies collapse, as the values of free peoples triumph over regimes that would put the soul itself in bondage. . . .

Neither drought nor freeze will stop us. We will recover. Not war, not recession. We will triumph in the end. Not a 40% high school dropout rate. We will keep our kids in school and teach them to compete and win. It will take time and discipline, but our course is clear. We will not suffer the future. We will shape it. We will not simply grow. We will manage our growth. We will not passively experience change. We will make change.

Yes, we can shape our physical environment.

But even more important and more threatened, we can shape our human environment.

But to shape our future we need a new vision of government, a vision based on the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. . . .

No longer can we be satisfied with reactive and remedial efforts. Even in this time of unprecedented fiscal constraint, we must find a way to at least begin to move to a mode of anticipation and prevention.

We must prevent the waste of precious time, precious dollars and precious lives.

But with revenues declining, how can new programs be undertaken when existing programs seem inescapably threatened by the budget crisis?

Now, more than ever, to lead is to choose. And the choice that California must make--the choice that the people and their government must make--is to give increasing attention and resources to the conditions that shape our children’s lives and California’s future.

Prevention is far better than any cure. Even those with vested interest in the status quo will not dispute this. They will simply ask: But surely, you don’t propose new preventive programs at the expense of established remedial programs?

That is exactly what we must propose. It is our only choice where it can be shown that prevention is more effective, and--more important--infinitely more humane, than remedial actions of greater cost and uncertain benefit. . . .

None of this can be achieved overnight. But all of it can be achieved.

We can change young attitudes and change young lives. Ask Jaime Escalante. Ask the Los Angeles volunteer mentor group called “The 100 Black Men.”

Together, let us bring preventive government, wise enough to invest in children as well as infrastructure, determined to shift from the remedial to the preventive, from income maintenance to enrichment of individual potential, so that we may set the human spirit soaring, and never be content with warehousing its failure. . . .

In this decade of the ‘90s, let us expand California’s horizons. Let us make California our gift to the Class of 2000, and make the Class of 2000 our gift to the 21st Century.

Let us aspire to nothing less.

Let us settle for nothing less.

Thank you, and God bless you.