Constitution Panel Retains Reform Plan

The California Constitution Revision Commission on Tuesday rejected an attempt to kill one of its key reforms: a recommendation for a radical restructuring of local government in California.

The vote was 11 to 6. By similar margins, the commission defeated 11 other attempts to scale back proposals developed by the commission over two years and introduced in the Legislature.

With that, the commission ended its 33rd general meeting and Chairman William Hauck of Sacramento declared its work over.

“The commission has done what it can do,” Hauck said, adding that he would not support pending legislation to extend the commission’s existence beyond midnight June 30.

Now it is up to the Legislature to decide whether to put before California voters this fall the most far-reaching reforms since the state Constitution was adopted in 1879.

“It is now important to let the legislative process proceed,” said Hauck, a former aide to Republican Gov. Pete Wilson who also served in the 1970s as chief of staff in the Assembly under the Democrats.

The assault on the commission’s work came primarily from recent appointees of Wilson and Republican Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle of Garden Grove.

Steven Frates of San Diego, a Democrat appointed by Pringle in February, tried to rescind the commission’s local government restructuring recommendation, which he condemned as “so bizarre and . . . so inordinately complex” that he felt it stood little chance of winning approval of either the Legislature or voters.

“I want to suggest that it would be counterproductive to what we are trying to achieve, which is rational government,” Frates said.

But state Sen. Lucy Killea (I-San Diego), who sponsored the legislation creating the commission in 1993, argued that the process of creating local charter commissions was quite simple.

“They [local government] can do nothing if they want. They can do something drastic if they want. That is the beauty of it,” Killea said.

A major goal of the commission was to develop a process by which the 7,000 units of local government in California--counties, cities, special districts and school districts--could eliminate duplicative or outdated functions.

The reform would require each county to create a commission to consider local reforms. At the extreme, there could be a merger of city and county governments and even school districts. No plan, however, could go into effect without voter approval.

Hauck acknowledged that the local government provision was “a work in progress,” but said details can be decided in the Legislature.

“Conceptually, this is a good provision,” Hauck said. “You can make this more complex than it is.”

Other commission recommendations that survived Tuesday included having the state treasurer appointed by the governor, relaxing term limits on state legislators and making some exceptions to Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax-cutting initiative.

The attack on the Proposition 13 provision was led by Joel Fox, a recent Wilson appointee who runs the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., named for the late co-author of the initiative.

But other Wilson appointees, particularly his former state finance director Russ Gould, were steadfast in supporting the commission.