Gov.’s timing could be right for reform

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been hustling around California this week pitching reform. Again. And that’s a wise thing.

There’s no time to dally. This year offers Schwarzenegger his last realistic shot at making good on the reforms he loudly promised voters while running Gray Davis out of Sacramento nearly five years ago.

He failed miserably in 2005, calling an unpopular special election to push ill-conceived, partisan “reforms” that voters emphatically rejected. The next year he backed off reforms, compromised with legislators on a $37-billion public works package that voters approved and easily won reelection.

Schwarzenegger will be morphing into a political pumpkin in 2010, his last year as governor. He’ll discover that special interests are far less eager than they have been to bankroll his favorite causes. Lame ducks lose loyalty.

So his final fat target, for anything requiring voter approval, is this November’s election.

Some of those 2003 Schwarzenegger campaign promises never were worth anything.

Remember the broom? The one he carted around the state flamboyantly pledging to “sweep the special interests out of the Capitol.” There are probably more now than ever.

“Money goes in,” his TV ads lamented, “favors go out and the people lose.” They still do and will until there’s public financing of campaigns. But Schwarzenegger hasn’t proposed campaign finance reform of any kind, except for some minor, misguided notion of outlawing fundraising by lawmakers during budget discussions.

Schwarzenegger has narrowed his desired reforms to two: eliminating the power of legislators to draw their own district lines and forcing more discipline in budget-writing.

Redistricting reform especially is significant and doable -- a legacy builder.

The last legislative gerrymandering in 2001 showed how self-interested, incumbent-friendly redistricting leads to political polarization, ideological extremism and legislative gridlock. All but a handful of elections are decided in party primaries, with the most far-left or far-right candidates normally winning, depending on whether the district is shaped to guarantee victory for a Democrat or a Republican. There’s rarely competition in November.

“People complain in America about how set up the system is in Russia,” Schwarzenegger told a group of local officials in Riverside on Tuesday. “Well, what do you think has been happening in California? . . . The system is rigged.

“Redistricting is all about getting people to compete and to campaign and to be more in the center. . . . So when they go to Sacramento, it’s easier to get together and to come to an agreement.”

Schwarzenegger is backing an initiative that would create an independent 14-citizen commission to craft legislative districts. Congressional lines still would be drawn by the Legislature -- a tactical move aimed at heading off campaign opposition from paranoid California House members who wouldn’t trust their political fates to independent map drawers.

The proposal is the product of Common Cause, AARP, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters. Its success or failure probably will depend on how many Democrats ultimately join the cause. Former state Controller Steve Westly, a Democrat, is an active supporter. Democratic Treasurer Bill Lockyer is expected to enlist but has held off, awaiting more bipartisan backing.

Ironically, if current legislative districts had been fairly drawn, Democrats probably would have cleaned up in November -- perhaps even gaining coveted two-thirds majorities in both houses. This year’s election is shaping up to be as pro-Democrat as the 1994 election was pro-Republican. That year, because Republican Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed the Democratic gerrymander and the state Supreme Court oversaw an honest redistricting, Republicans capitalized on the electorate’s conservative mood and briefly captured the Assembly.

“Democrats whine and moan that they can’t get a two-thirds vote for the budget,” says political analyst Tony Quinn, a redistricting consultant for Republicans in the 1980s. “Why can’t they? They gave it away in 2001 by creating too many safe seats. Democrats would have been better off today -- and would be in the future -- if independent redistricting were in place.”

Quinn says it’s now or never for redistricting reform. There’d be no hope in 2010, one year before the next scheduled gerrymandering. “Democrats will begin to smell the coffee and never want to give up the power.”

They never have.

But this could be a good year for selling political reform. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, built a career out of advocating reform. The front-running Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, is an agent of change.

Signature-collectors currently are circulating petitions to qualify the initiative for the ballot. Schwarzenegger already has pumped $300,000 from his political kitty into the signature-gathering effort and plans to donate more.

The governor’s proposed budget reform is more iffy, in both its prospects for enactment and potential effectiveness. The goal is to finally keep his campaign pledges to “end the crazy deficit spending” and “tear up the credit card.”

His plan has two parts. There’d be a spending limit, based on 10-year average revenue growth (currently 5.4%). Any excess revenue would be stashed in a rainy-day fund for use when deficits loomed. Second, the governor could automatically cut spending in mid-year based on priorities previously negotiated with the Legislature.

Democrats are dubious. They don’t want to hand the governor -- any governor -- more power.

He already has line-item veto muscle to cut spending from a budget before signing it. If the economy goes sour, he can call a special session and negotiate emergency spending cuts, as Schwarzenegger recently did.

But the governor is insisting.

“Budget reform means let’s get rid of these ups and downs [in revenues] and making cuts and punishing people,” he told local government officials in Fresno on Monday. “Let’s get rid of this whole thing about we always have to ask for more taxes, because the people didn’t create this problem. Sacramento created this problem. So why go and punish the people? If you want to punish anyone, punish Sacramento.”

I guess the governor still doesn’t consider himself part of Sacramento -- or acknowledge that he dug the state deeper into debt by slashing the car tax $5 billion annually.

Schwarzenegger will be rewarded or punished by historians based on the legacy he creates -- much of it this year.

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george.skelton@latimes.com