Gingrich’s Unintended Revolution--All Power to Sacramento : Washington is shedding its authority, but the cities and counties aren’t getting any. The state capital is in charge.

When the Legislature clamped restrictions on local rent-control ordinances last week, conservatives notched another victory. An 11-year effort by landholders had culminated in the elimination of tough rent provisions in Santa Monica, West Hollywood and elsewhere. The conservative revolution marches on, right?

Actually, the rent-control bill takes power away from local governments. The Legislature, not city councils, will determine what type of rent control may be imposed in local jurisdictions. Whatever you may think about rent control, you must wonder if this is what the Republican revolution is supposed to mean. As state Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), remarked after voting “no”: “I thought this was an era of local control.”

Well, sort of. As defined by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, this is an era in which power is supposed to “devolve” from Washington to city and county governments. Unfortunately, this devolution is stopping in Sacramento, where the Gingrich agenda, and the state’s complicated financial mechanisms, are being used to concentrate power in a dysfunctional state government. The Beltway hasn’t been eliminated. It’s simply moved to Northern California.

In theory, a shift of power from Washington to the state capitals is a good thing. State legislators and governors are closer to the people; they better understand local concerns; they can craft more responsive answers. This scenario may well play out in most states--but probably not in California.

Sacramento is more like Washington than it is like other state capitals. For one thing, it is remote, at least from Southern California. Nowhere in the country do so many people live so far from their state capital. Also, it is hard to argue that members of the state Assembly are “closer to the people” when they each average 400,000 constituents. (Each House member represents about 573,000 people.) Finally, Sacramento gets much less media coverage in Southern California than Washington does.

Sacramento, moreover, is also heavily populated by the same type of inside-the-Beltway business lobbyists who know how to get their way--especially when close-to-the-people local governments do something they don’t approve of. Rent control is a perfect example. Conservatives may desire local control, but not if it means some localities pursuing a liberal agenda. The apartment owners’ lobby understands this. On the rent-control bill, they knew how to goose a fairly conservative Legislature to get what they wanted.

The Beltway-in-Sacramento problem is going to get worse as more power and money devolve from Washington. As federal health and social programs are repackaged into block grants, they will flow through Sacramento. So will many housing and community-development grants that traditionally have flowed directly to cities. Whatever the need might be in Southern California, this money will be sliced and diced according to the political requirements of an unresponsive Sacramento power structure.

The downshift of power from Washington to Sacramento comes at a time when the state is already at war with local governments because of the control it exerts over how local tax money is raised and spent. While Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators complain about unfunded mandates and a fiscal squeeze created in Washington, they have quite deliberately done the same thing to locals. The Los Angeles County fiscal crisis is partly the result of such state policies. Sacramento has imposed onerous health, welfare and crime-fighting obligations on the counties, yet it has retained almost total control over finances. When the state faced its own fiscal crises in the early ‘90s, for example, Sacramento simply took away property-tax money from the cities and counties to balance its budget.

In other words, Sacramento already has a lot more power than most people realize, and now it’s in the process of acquiring more, thanks to the Gingrich revolution. As a result, the state capital will soon become California’s unrivaled power center--at a time when the governor isn’t governing, the Legislature isn’t legislating and the state bureaucracy is in disarray.

If devolution is to work, ways to break the power bottleneck in Sacramento will have to be found. This entails involving local governments, especially small, municipal governments, the last form most people still trust. What’s required is a new compact between California and its local governments, where authority is shared and mutual power is respected. The proposals of the state’s Constitutional Revision Commission, whose recommendations are due next month, may provide an opportunity to create such a compact.

But more is needed than simply sharing power. With power comes responsibility, and local governments must show that they are ready to shoulder the burdens of the region’s larger problems. Southern California’s cities and counties have a Bosnia-like reputation for turf warfare; they must put such rancor behind them if they are going to use power more effectively. Also, Sacramento’s iron grip on the public purse, which has turned the locals into mere supplicants, has fostered a mentality of victim among mayors and county supervisors. Whatever’s wrong, the locals can always complain that it’s all Sacramento’s fault.

This attitude, too, must be overcome. In many ways, it would be easier, politically, for Southern California’s leaders to let the devolution stop in Sacramento. That way, they could participate in the occasional benefits of a downshifting of power and still blame the state for all their problems. But it would not solve anything. If Sacramento is not to become Beltway West, Southern California will have to claim its rightful share of power flowing from Washington.