Renovate -- but Innovate

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is on a Pat Brown kick, trying to emulate the great builder with a $222-billion plan to fix California’s infrastructure. But the emulating may be misplaced.

It’s good to mimic Pat Brown’s leadership -- his political courage, negotiating finesse and focused tenacity. Schwarzenegger still hasn’t proved he’s capable of that.

But it’s not so good just to copy the way Pat Brown built up California nearly half a century ago. We’ve changed dramatically. So too have our needs.

California’s population has grown 2 1/2 times since Brown became governor in 1959. It’s now up to 37 million-plus and climbing to a projected 46 million within two decades.

There’s a lot less open space now than when Brown was building freeways across relatively cheap, undeveloped land. One illustration of that is there currently are 9.2 million fewer acres of farmland than when Brown was elected, even though his historic water project provided new irrigation opportunities.

Irrigated crops could not compete with profits to be reaped from producing housing tracts. The residential sprawl, in turn, produced traffic congestion, air pollution and higher flood threats because ground cover was paved over that previously had soaked up storm waters. Only 10% of rain falling on natural ground runs off, compared with more than half that hits heavily paved regions.

In Brown’s era, the California environment was much less fragile and largely taken for granted. His water project quenched Southern California’s thirst and dammed northern floodwaters, but was disastrous for fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Wetlands were drained to house the bloating population. Beaches now are routinely closed because of contaminated water runoff. Smog chokes the Central Valley.

Builder Brown didn’t face these problems.

Today, Schwarzenegger is confronted with proportionately higher costs for highway construction and strong environmentalist resistance to big new dams. In fact, “enviros” view with suspicion any major new water facility: an off-stream reservoir or a so-called peripheral canal skirting the earthquake-vulnerable delta.

California really is a fixer-upper, but that’s just for starters.

We have unbearable housing costs and, as a result, diabolical commutes on a scale unfathomable in Brown’s era.

This means that any governor with half a vision must be building more than highways and reservoirs. He must be building an infrastructure that checks sprawl and recognizes we’re powerless to produce more rain. This is done by utilizing more efficiently what we already have -- by creating economic incentives for housing people around urban rail hubs, for “in-filling” cities with multifamily developments, for conserving water and moving more aggressively toward desalination.

A lot of this already is being done locally, especially in Southern California. State government has been helping. But never has it been on Sacramento’s top priority list. This is the time to put it there, now that the governor and Legislature are on the brink of borrowing tens of billions to rebuild California.

Schwarzenegger talks a good game. “What California do you want in 20 or 30 years?” he asked legislators in his State of the State speech. “Bring me your innovative ideas.”

The legislators will have to, because little innovation shows up in the governor’s bricks-and-mortar infrastructure plan. It emphasizes building highways, schools, levees, jails and courts. The first three definitely are urgent. But there’s nothing in there about affordable housing, hospitals, parks or high-speed rail.

There is $4.5 billion for commuter rail and transit over 10 years. That’s hardly enough, and only $700 million of it involves state bond money. The rest is envisioned from federal, local and existing revenue sources. In fact, that’s the funding pattern for the whole infrastructure plan.

“When I look at the governor’s plan, it seems like a regurgitation of what we did in the 20th century, not what we need to do in the 21st,” says state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a former housing developer, an “in-fill” advocate and a Democratic gubernatorial contender. “Investing in the future is not simply building more of what we built 50 years ago.

“The state should be encouraging more ‘smart growth’ -- urban revitalization -- and less sprawl.”

Democratic legislators intend to insist on “smart growth” incentives as they negotiate a final plan with Schwarzenegger.

“If we just pour in more money and more asphalt, that won’t solve the problem,” says Senate Democratic Caucus Chairman Tom Torlakson of Antioch, a policy wonk and former county supervisor. “We cannot pave our way out of the current transportation crisis. We have to plan our way out.”

Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) tried to talk up building homes around urban rail hubs last year, but couldn’t be heard over all the special-election static.

“People need half a shot at living near where they work, which is the ultimate way to eliminate congestion and pollution,” Perata says. “I’ve told the governor this is very important to me. I got a sense it’s something he really hasn’t thought about. But everything is negotiable.”

Everything is, agrees Sunne Wright McPeak, a progressive former Contra Costa County supervisor who heads Schwarzenegger’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. “We’re anti-dumb growth.”

But McPeak says cities first must reform their zoning to expand housing supply. “The state just can’t throw money at the problem.”

Schwarzenegger’s infrastructure plan is giving California an opportunity not just to rebuild, but to break new ground.

George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.