As long as we are looking at streamlining our state government and blowing up the boxes in Sacramento, I think we should take a serious look at the office of the Governor.
For the last six years, the Governor has been unable to propose a balanced budget. Since he took office and reversed Gray Davis’s Vehicle License Fee increase, Schwarzenegger has used every possible trick to paper over the state’s ever increasing deficit.
From issuing $15 billion in “deficit reduction” bonds, to borrowing $9 billion from the schools, Schwarzenegger has systematically pushed through budgets through that have raided every possible funding source, while also pushing initiatives that have systematically tied the state budget up in constitutional knots, making us unable to respond to the current crisis.
If there is any single who is responsible for the near-bankruptcy of our state, it is the Governor.
So I think the Legislature should take a serious look at the hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent on the Governor’s office. Are these crazy schemes really worth the money we have been spending? Or would we be better off with a part-time Governor, and a much smaller Gubernatorial staff?
“make it” part-time? I think the Governor has opened up a satellite office at that ski resort in Idaho at this point.
If we can seriously consider a ballot initiative to make the legislature part-time, why not seriously consider part-time pay for the Governor?
It’s clear from his proposed budgets that he’s never previously held any kind of public office where he actually had responsibility to his constituents. I think we’d be better off relegating him to ribbon cutting ceremonies and ads, and leave the real work to the legislature.
Yes, the legislature is divided, but they all work hard to craft real solutions that work for their constituents. And the legislature never would have wasted so much money in special election power grabs.
eliminate the governor’s office entirely, and move CA to a unicameral parliamentary system with a majority vote for taxes and budget. what executive branch offices remain can easily be transferred to the legislature, or made independent, their heads either appointed by the majority party or directly elected like the superintendent of education.
Cut the senate out, and get rid of half the constitutional officers.
We need an assembly with an open primary.
we need an attorney general, get rid of the insurance commissioner and make it the AG’s turg.
We need a controller – a friggin nerd like chiang – so asperger’s he was actually going to go ahead and renovate his offices in the middle of a depression. we do not need a treasurer.
we need a governor, there is no need for a lieutenant.
no state commissions paying office holders more than 75k a year, and no staff on such commissions making more than 50k.
You want a commission on something else, i will volunteer gratis.