A Pause Before We Run Them Out

California legislators make easy targets. They can seem more like comic strip caricatures than real people--buffoons who bicker endlessly about enema regulations and similar nonsense while budget deadlines pass and state institutions crumble.

Lawmaker-bashing lately has become popular. Through the initiative process, voters have saddled lawmakers with term limits and smaller staffs. And Pete Wilson--emboldened by the state’s dismay with its legislators--is engaged, through a state initiative, in a run on their budgetary powers.

And so, before Californians pass an initiative outlawing the institution outright, I figure it’s only fair to let somebody make the case for the Legislature--if there is a case. I drafted Assemblyman Phil Isenberg (D-Sacramento), a former Sacramento mayor known as a straight shooter and legislative craftsman. We talked for two hours and what follows is a greatly condensed but otherwise verbatim summary of one lawmaker’s thoughts on the state Legislature:

* It is a common American trait--I call it the Episcopalian reform urge--that if there is something wrong in life all you have to do is tinker with the structure of government a little bit and it will get better. There is this belief that if you just change the rules of the game board--term limits--somehow a miracle occurs and decisions that are hard become easy, and the Legislature just fits into it.

* There is a lot of churning that goes on. For example, we have 300 bills a year that deal with education finance--not with the big things, but intricate, small changes. It just goes on and on. Would the world end if none of those bills passed? No. Would there be some complications? Yes. Would we be better able to solve the serious problems of the state? No way.

* Californians have not elected a Republican governor and a Democratic Legislature out of ignorance. They don’t trust Democrats to run things efficiently, and they don’t trust the motives of Republicans.

* The budget must be such a hopeless din to real people. The numbers are astronomical. The word is that there will be no police officers, there will be no firefighters, every nursing home will close. None of which is true. This whole budget debate is about $11 billion. What nobody mentions is that, even if we don’t find $11 billion, we still are going to spend $112 billion. Tell me that the world will come to an end if you spend $112 billion instead of $123 billion. But all we ever hear from is people who want to have their programs funded, or their taxes reduced. We don’t hear from anybody else.

* I keep going to these Republicans thinking all I have to do is explain the truth and it will change their minds. And they have the same opinion of me. They say: Phil, the voters just don’t want more taxes, and you have to cut this program. I say: They don’t want cuts in programs either. And you know what? We are both right. They don’t want more taxes and they don’t want the programs cut, and they hire us to figure out how to do that. And it is a reasonable request to ask and an extraordinarily difficult one to deliver.

* Over time, imperfectly, with great anguish, not as fast as I want, the system works. Here we are in the second, maybe the third year, of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and no California school has closed. Every kid who wants to be in school is in school. Infrastructure: Do you think we are as bad off as the Eastern United States? Clearly we are not. Parks: Yes, there are fees; isn’t that terrible? But look at what you have got and we are still fighting for more.

* Would this have happened without the Legislature? Would Ronald Reagan have done it that way all by himself? Would Jerry Brown, windmills on every hill? I don’t know. The point is, governance is attempting to understand and form a common social consensus. It is a mutual relation between the citizenry and elected officials and it is not just one-directional. It is churning, back and forth, all the time and somebody has to articulate the practical expressions of all that churning: How do you raise money? How do you spend taxes? What laws do you pass that say something about values in society?

And we just happen to be the “it” right now.

That’s what the man said. Decide for yourself if you buy it. My own view is that while our state lawmakers certainly asked for it I am a bit nervous about the way we’ve gone about whittling them down to size. Every bit of power we strip from the Legislature ultimately must be given to someone else. And that someone else may be Gov. Wilson. Or it may be the DMV. Or, God help us, even the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Think about it.