The Winds of Change Blow Hard

Our state Capitol is a marvelous antique, a graceful, gleaming monument to the taste and aspirations of an earlier generation of Californians. As a symbol of government, however, the building is a hopeless wreck, way out of touch with the times.

It opened for business in 1869, after almost a decade of construction. The Legislature had appropriated a half-million dollars. The builders, fond of fine wood and marble, came in $2 million over budget. A special tax was passed in order to settle the debt.

A century later, a complete restoration was ordered up, from cornerstone to copper dome. This loving work was completed in 1982. “How much did it all cost?” one of the Capitol’s ever helpful tour guides was asked the other day. She hemmed a little, hawed a little more, and then coughed up the figure. Sixty-eight million, plus. Taxpayer money. Her inquisitor shook his head, feigning a Perot-like disgust.

“But what I always tell the people,” the tour guide quickly added, “is that it comes out to only about four dollars a person. That doesn’t seem like so much, does it? Of course,” she mused, “who knows what would happen if we had to do it today?”

Who knows?

Everybody knows.

*

The people have spoken. And spoken. And spoken again. They want smaller government. Except when it comes to building state prisons, in which case they seem willing to write blank checks. But let’s not quibble. What we heard first with Proposition 13--which came along after the Capitol restoration already was under way--and what we heard again on the second Tuesday in November, is a cry for less expensive government. Forget Roman Corinthian architecture and fleur-de-lis design work. Slab walls and temporary trailers will do fine. Enough of Saks or Neiman’s. The people demand Wal-Mart, Costco--retail government at wholesale prices. Hubba. Hubba.

Since the election, radio call-in shows and letters-to-the-editor columns have rung anew with hopeful rhetoric that finally it might just happen. Across the land, big government Democrats are said to be on the run, chased by presumably penny-wise Republicans. Here in Sacramento, hope for a New Frugality is vested mainly in the GOP’s surprise landing of a two-vote majority in the Assembly. Unless Willie Brown can find the magic to make 41 votes count less than 39, his long run as Speaker is finished.

This week, with the Legislature in recess until Monday, the Capitol was officially empty. The real work--the negotiations for power--took place in venues off limits to traveling columnists. Of those who were around, none seemed willing yet to count Brown out. Smart people. Still, there was plenty of equivocating analysis about how Sacramento business might be conducted under a new emperor. And none of it would cheer those who dream so sweetly of a government downsizing.

“Now that they at last are in charge,” one Democratic Sage said of the Republicans, “why would they want to make what they are in charge of any smaller?”

*

Instead, if Brown and the Democrats are benched, what most likely will happen is this. Committee staff jobs now held by earnest Democrats will be filled by earnest Republicans--but they will be filled. The prize parking places in the Capitol garage will be redistributed, along with view offices. The political backbeat will change a bit. Welfare benefits will be cut, more prisons will be constructed, business tax breaks and crime bills will pile up side by side, like stacks of winter firewood. And yet, all this has been taking place hurly-burly for the last several years already. And does anyone still pretend it matters much?

Doors will swing wide still for lobbyists and fund-raisers, the pragmatists who finance the play. The budget won’t be quite balanced, but, hey, maybe next year. There will be more death penalty bills but not more executions. Tort reform will have a day, but as an issue this is a bore--intramurals for lawyers and doctors.

“And none of it,” a veteran legislator joined in, “will have much impact on our lives. The sun will still rise in the east. Water will still come out of the tap. Your kids will still sass you when they come home from school. It still won’t be the 1950s again. We won’t be living in Levittown.”

And the poor will get poorer, and the rich richer, and the middle-class more frustrated. That it’s banal makes it no less true. Maybe someday the notion will sink in that almost everybody up here, Democrat, Republican, lobbyist, bureaucrat, belongs to the same club. Then things might become interesting. For now, though, it’s best to assume the alabaster clubhouse is secure.