A Rush to Save Gold Rush Gala

California needs an alchemist to salvage the shambles of its three-year celebration of the discovery of gold at Coloma 150 years ago, the Gold Rush of the following year and statehood in 1850.

The effort has suffered from a slow start, unrealistic expectations, lack of planning, poor management and a failure to reap more than a fraction of its fund-raising goals. These facts have all come to light in a legislative investigation and a three-hour hearing conducted Tuesday by the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Chairman Michael Machado (D-Linden) gave the Wilson administration three weeks to develop a plan to put some life into the California Gold Discovery to Statehood Sesquicentennial Commission and its parallel nonprofit fund-raising foundation.

Absent that, lawmakers have threatened to cut off further state funds for the celebration, for which Gov. Pete Wilson has budgeted $972,000 in the next fiscal year. This would be in addition to $2.3 million appropriated earlier.

The celebration was conceived as a public-private partnership on the pattern of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In his January 1994 executive order, Wilson called for “a beneficially and financially successful event of global stature.”

Using seed money from the Legislature, the foundation was to solicit corporate sponsorships to raise an estimated $4.8 million by this June to finance the first series of events, beginning last month at the gold discovery site on the American River in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Sacramento.

But it took a year for the commission and foundation just to organize themselves. The celebration effort never developed any focus or direction, making fund-raising difficult or impossible. There was no financial assistance for communities participating in events, as promised. There still is no strategic plan.

What can be done now? The commission needs to scale back its global ambitions and develop a common-sense plan that focuses on communities and the history and impact of the Gold Rush, along with the massive migration to California that it triggered. Machado’s deadline of three weeks is tight, so there is no time to waste for the commission to get its act together.