The state is broken, yet I am intrigued by the circumstance. (This post is an aberration of sorts.)

Mark DeSaulnier is coming to town, well, Pinole. The state senator will be hosting a town hall event on state reform Thursday evening in what I would presume to be a packed Pinole City Hall. Unfortunately, “proposals […] on the pressing need for state government reform” is not all that is needed to right the California ship. The state needs to do like France and wave the flag of a second bear republic (or third, depending on the count, while obviously maintaining ties to the union, of course; no South Carolinian separatist first-man-overboard motives here).

A rewriting of the state’s constitution is clearly essential; a constitutional convention in Sacramento, er, Monterey. Anything short of a complete rewrite is merely surficial; the root of the problem is deep and unmoving.

An aversion to taxes — to the point of being perverse — is a principal culprit, in my opinion. Nothing in government is more powerful than local taxes (and nothing is more tangible). If you desire better schools, more police and fire protection, well-kept parks or preserved open spaces, taxes collected and spent at the local level is the answer. And the more taxes kept local, the better.

But in the climate of a body politic, both state-wide and local, demanding no new taxes (pay the teachers by cutting police; pay the police by cutting prisons; pay for prisons by cutting parks; pay for parks — well, get rid of the parks altogether, I guess), meaningful reform is simply not possible beyond a very, very long list of overly positive assumptions. Proposition 13 should be repealed, sure; but government could surely be smaller even if it is repealed and taxation was normalized, stabilized. Local taxes — taxes paid by me, and my neighbor, to pay for streets, schools, parks and police — nothing is more effective.

But the state’s constitution — as it stands — can not stand. This may be an extreme view, but a wholesale reform of the system is needed (the way politicians are elected, the way taxes are collected and tax dollars spent, the amendment/initiative process, etc., everything). This perilous occasion may be perceived as an insult — the failure of a government to serve its people — but it is also an opportunity, nothing short of priceless in its uniqueness, and an equally enormous responsibility, to be present at the creation.

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