Editorial: Constitutional convention may be the answer

Marin Independent Journal

September 20, 2009

MARIN LAWYER Andrew Giacomini has presented some persuasive arguments for California calling a constitutional convention.

One of them is eliminating procedural roadblocks that have stood in the way of solving the state's budget crisis.

"We need to press the reset button on the state," Giacomini told a gathering of the League of Women Voters of Marin County.

He is part of Repair California, a business-centered organization that is campaigning for a convention where citizens will rewrite the state's rules of governance.

The group is trying to build political support for a pair of 2010 initiatives through which California voters would call for a 2011 convention. Reforms proposed at the convention would be placed on a 2012 ballot for voters' endorsement.

The approach is worthy of serious consideration.

For instance, there is a push to get rid of the two-thirds vote needed to pass the state budget. Backers of the reform are right - the mandate allows the Legislature's minority to unfairly dictate budget decisions.

Recently, because of a double whammy of a historic budget crisis and intractable partisan politics, budget negotiations have become shamefully destructive and costly spectacles.

State politicians are worried about the convention's political composition. This is a legitimate concern. If the convention becomes a tool of special interests, it will not act in the public interest.

Short of the convention, there are other changes that could help cure the state's political paralysis.

Redrawing the legislative district boundaries so they encompass and reflect a community rather than a partisan stronghold will be effective in helping remedy Sacramento's political dysfunction.

The boundaries drawn by lawmakers in 2000 simply created so-called "safe" seats, where political parties controlled the seats. Such lines have served to create frustration among voters whose parties are rendered a futile and ignored political minority. They have helped create the resentment and resistance to compromise that has helped erode public confidence in Sacramento.

Redrawing the boundaries so that so that they are guided by communities-of-interest rather than partisan lines should help.

So might passage of a 2010 ballot measure to bring back open primaries.

Since the 1930s, the state Legislature has needed a two-thirds majority vote to approve its budget. The super-majority threshold was instituted as a way to control spending and force the two parties to work together.

More than 70 years later, it doesn't appear to be working as planned.

Giacomini and other Repair California leaders deserve credit for pushing for possible bipartisan solutions in a political environment in which the Legislature has been paralyzed - in large part due to its members' refusal to abandon their partisan trenches.

A convention, where a truly broad-based collection of citizens would come together to do what lawmakers have failed to do, may be California's best bet for finding a solution to its budget crisis.