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When Jerry Brown finished his fourth and final term as governor in January 2019, he was widely acclaimed for his prudent fiscal management. The sense of chaos in the Capitol seen during Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last years in office was a distant memory. In his 2018 campaign, Brown’s successor, Gavin Newsom, promised to pair this prudence with much more vigorous and thorough evaluations of state programs to see what was working well and to fix what wasn’t.
Nineteen months into Newsom’s second term, after first-term fiascoes with the alphabet soup of state government that includes the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the Employment Development Department (EDD) and the Financial Information System for California (Fi$Cal), the governor’s promise couldn’t seem more hollow. This was underscored in a July 14 essay in the Los Angeles Times by state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, a veteran political operative who was president of the student government at San Diego State University. Glazer wrote how his fellow Democrats were good at identifying problems and providing funding to respond to them but not at tracking whether their responses actually worked. His most high-profile examples: the housing shortage, homelessness, and long-standing issues with public education, starting with “hundreds” of failing schools. He also said the Newsom istration had successfully opposed measures meant to evaluate which mental health programs were working and which weren’t.
Unfortunately, this summer there have only been more examples of lawmakers more interested in the performative aspects of their jobs — being perceived as caring and comionate — than in fixing California’s problems. Newsom is now indicating he is prepared to at least $20 billion in bond proposals to be put before voters next March and November — potentially leading to a record for most new debt added in a single year. Among the most likely to be placed on the ballot by the Legislature are measures on housing, homelessness, public education and mental health — all on Glazer’s list of issues where past state efforts have never faced the sort of critical scrutiny they deserved. This means Newsom is ready to borrowing vast sums to be paid back over 30 years or so, with untold interest costs on top of that, on programs that taxpayers have no reason to believe will be cost-effective.
That line about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results might as well be California’s motto. Glazer says the state needs more than good intentions and that “the Legislature must ensure that the money we spend is actually improving the lives of the people we say we are committed to helping.” Anyone listening?
