Mike Feuer: Report from Sacramento

I’d like to welcome my Brentwood constituents to the first edition of a column I’ll write from time to time for the Brentwood News. It’s a privilege to serve you as your Assembly member in our state capitol, where I’ve been tackling our most pressing challenges. Recently I was named the Assembly’s Majority Policy Leader, adding to my duties as chair of both the Judiciary Committee and the Assembly’s Select Committee on Improving State Government.
My key responsibilities this session include co-chairing a legislative working group on job creation, authoring legislation to make quality, affordable health care more available—especially for kids—and leading a drive to enact sweeping reforms to our state budget.
For nearly a year I’ve been heading the Assembly’s budget reform efforts. We’ve made substantial progress, and now are working to put in place a comprehensive, practical package of reforms based on the proposals made by the bipartisan good government group California Forward.
These changes would lead us to have annual budgets that are on-time, based on concrete performance standards, reflect longer-term planning, and enable us to face emerging challenges while living within our means.
Here’s how we get there. First, we should bring majority rule to California’s budget. Only two other states (Connecticut and Rhode Island) compel two-thirds of legislators to ratify the budget. While it might seem the two-thirds rule would force beneficial compromise, it actually has the effect of empowering a small group of legislators in the minority (but whose votes are necessary to enact the budget) to hold out in exchange for goals outside the mainstream of California voters. This process of taking legislative hostages to leverage budget votes is a principal reason our annual budget takes so long to enact.
In addition, we should devote our limited tax dollars to our state’s most effective and important programs through performance-based budgeting and rigorous oversight of existing spending. We should limit one-time revenues to one-time purposes.
Any new program or initiative requiring voter approval that costs more than $25 million should have a specific funding source or be scuttled. We should require the governor to present multi-year budget forecasts every year, forcing state leaders to grapple with the long-term implications of each budget.
In 1994, in the midst of a serious recession, a Constitutional Revision Commission was convened. After two years of solid work, the Commission recommended several common-sense, bipartisan solutions to reform the state’s budget. Sadly, that effort failed because the economic crisis passed, and the impetus to make major changes passed with it.
Today, we are just beginning to emerge from an even worse economic downturn. But we can’t let the opportunity to make consequential changes pass us by again. It’s critical that the Legislature display the leadership the state needs by passing these reforms, giving voters the opportunity to transform how we do business in a state that desperately needs reform.