Requiem for an Institution: California’s Legislature : Politics: Prop. 140, reapportionment and economic recession have combined to kill what Jesse Unruh created. And Wilson isn’t singing the blues.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s State of the State address to the Legislature was, in many ways, a requiem for an era in California government and politics. The economic boom that reliably fed Golden State programs has gone bust. And the legislative institution that California has known since Jesse M. Unruh created a full-time, professional body in 1966 is in its death throes.

The gloom and doom here surrounding state finances are palpable. The governor’s approach to solving the fiscal crisis, primarily at the expense of the poor, seems thin as a reed. His budget appears to be balanced by a combination of optimistic economic assumptions and accounting tricks. Still, the overall legislative response to Wilson’s proposals has been cautious and muted.

Wilson’s speech produced none of the scenery-chewing by conservative Republicans or ringing applause from liberal Democrats that filled the chamber last year. Or vice versa--since this year conservatives have far more to cheer about than Democrats, whose constituencies are most directly threatened.

This lack of intensity may have had something to do with Wilson’s smart political maneuvering--arguing that health and welfare cuts are necessary to free up revenue to “invest in education and preventive care of children.” Kids are safe and potent political symbols. Who’s going to defend shortchanging them?

There is a new--and unfamiliar--sense of powerlessness that permeates the legislative process. It partly stems from lawmakers’ having to face a recession budget. Never have their economic and political choices been so limited. And when they’re not paralyzed by fiscal panic, shell-shocked lawmakers mope around the Capitol, mourning the untimely death of their political careers.

Proposition 140, passed by California voters almost two years ago, not only limits individual legislative tenure, it redefines institutional capabilities. By drastically cutting staff support, it may weaken the Legislature’s ability to respond to future crises. Term limits will make it more difficult to do the long- range planning and gain the expertise that could help avert the next budget disaster or restore public confidence in government. By the time legislators get up to speed on how the budget process works, they’ll exit the arena--abrogating, in Wilson’s terms, “the job they were elected to do” to unelected bureaucrats.

Wilson clearly understands that voters are dissatisfied with business-as-usual in Sacramento, and he’s riding the wave. He is positioning a comatose Legislature as the fall guy for the state’s continuing financial woes, something that most governors with ornery, opposition-party legislatures do. He is also pursuing new budget powers that will further skew the system of checks and balances. His “Taxpayers’ Protection Act” initiative would grant the governor sweeping emergency powers giving him final say over state spending if the Legislature doesn’t act.

Responding to the governor’s demand that the Legislature get cracking on budget cuts, State Senate President pro tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) insisted, “We’re not a rubber stamp; we’re a democratic system.” Well, maybe not any more.

How can the Legislature, with its staff cut by 40%, its independent budget analyst decimated, its members preoccupied with saving their political lives, prove a match for a well-staffed, unified executive? It can’t--we know that from pre-1966 history. And we know that will affect policy.

More than Wilson’s aggressive attempt to gain control over the budget process or the fallout from Prop. 140, what has really rocked the legislative institution is the immediate effect of reapportionment. Observed a Sacramento-watcher: “The dawn of the realization that the divine right of kings is dead came with the (court-appointed) masters’ lines.” And now chastened legislators are hustlin’ and dancin’, trying to please the folks back home.

The good news is that, faced with the more competitive districts the state Supreme Court’s panel appear to have drawn, lawmakers are becoming more responsive to their constituencies. The bad news is that leaves little time for broad policy-making for the public good. The problems California faces are societal, and legislators are pandering to their districts at a time when grand solutions are needed. That increases the balkanization of an already divided state.

The legislative institution has been mortally wounded by corruption, too. The continuing FBI investigation and a string of indictments and convictions of Sacramento politicians and insiders have demoralized the Legislature and its staff, further weakening its leadership. All this has helped to render the institution dysfunctional.

And the paranoia that has set in as a result of the revelation that former State Sen. Alan Robbins is “singing” to the Feds has further impaired the Legislature’s ability to function. Trust, which, greases the wheels of policy-making, is in even shorter supply than usual. Colleagues have become enemies.

And they have become political opponents, even within the same party, as well. This is because the masters’ reapportionment lines dumped incumbents together in several districts and left some legislators considering runs against allies for other seats. That kind of political Darwinism makes it even more difficult than it already is to get a two-thirds vote to pass a budget, or to make the kind of hard economic adjustments California needs to get back on course.

California’s legislative history shows that political courage has been exercised more easily and often from the protection of a safe seat. It will be harder to come by, not only in the Legislature but also in the governor’s corner office.

And so this requiem for a quality of life and a style of governance continues to be played out. The theme of Wilson’s budget message echoes its coda: “Tough times require tough choices.”

In the end, politics is about choices. Who should govern? How? Who defines policy priorities? Who pays?

And, this time, when we make the choices that will determine California’s future, we can’t keep on destroying institutions willy-nilly. We can’t continue lurching from crisis to crisis without the courage to share the pain, the compromise and the political risks. We can’t opt for instant or selfish solutions--or none at all, because that might be easier.

An economic upswing is not enough to ensure the right choices. Leadership certainly plays a part, but only a part. As Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton recently said, “You can have all the government initiatives in the world . . . but they have to operate within a receptive culture where everybody is willing to assume some responsibility for the future.”

In California, we’re not there yet--and we won’t be, until the state’s citizens and leaders move together to consider what it means to be a community and not merely soloists in a disharmonious requiem.