No one ever said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t a quick
study. He proved it again the other day, when he quietly abandoned
the notion of eliminating more than 100 state boards and
commissions
– an aim that was the central theme of his ballyhooed January
state of the state speech.
No one ever said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t a quick study. He proved it again the other day, when he quietly abandoned the notion of eliminating more than 100 state boards and commissions – an aim that was the central theme of his ballyhooed January state of the state speech.
It wasn’t so much that Schwarzenegger gave up on his concept of blowing up boxes. Rather, he discovered to his shock and dismay that real and passionate people inhabit many of those boxes, and that most exist for good reason.
Why he didn’t know this before, why his aides couldn’t have told him this, is anyone’s guess.
But unlike some other politicians, Schwarzenegger was not afraid to at least tacitly admit that one of his pet ideas was grossly wrong, and back off.
True, he got some help from state legislators, who made it clear they would not okay a willy-nilly abolishing of outfits like the state Medical Board and the Contractors License Board, with all their powers suddenly switched to direct appointees of the governor.
There were also vocal protests from many people and groups these boards regulate, saying they prefer decisions by qualified professionals not political hacks.
This wasn’t the first time Schwarzenegger backed away from a bad idea. When he tried to knock about $40 million from the state budget last year by eliminating subsidies for caretakers of the extremely ill and the frail elderly, he heard protests from thousands of middle-class Californians, and recanted.
He also backed off when fierce protests greeted his attempt to eliminate a longstanding requirement that businesses must give workers a lunch break sometime before the sixth hour of their shift.
The question now is what should Arnold give up next? Surely not his drive to change the reapportionment process which now produces virtually no truly competitive races for Congress or the state Legislature. While the plan Schwarzenegger is currently pushing – to take the once-a-decade remapping process away from legislators and give it to a panel of retired judges – may not be perfect and will not guarantee lack of partisanship, it’s still a cut above today’s system, where the foxes not only guard the henhouse, but draw the plans for it.
Surely, he will not give up on his plan to shift public employee retirement plans from today’s guaranteed–benefit system to one featuring 401-k accounts similar to those that dominate retirement planning for employees in private industry. He’s put significant energy into arguing for that and no one has yet proven it would be a disaster.
Which leaves nursing staff requirements and education funding as the two areas where Schwarzenegger is pushing bad ideas that he would do well to ease off.
The governor likes to say he’s giving public schools more money than ever in his proposed budget, even though it’s $2 billion less than what the law passed as Proposition 98 calls for and does not reimburse schools the $2 billion he “borrowed” from them last year.
As he says, the dollar amount the schools would get is greater than ever. But so are their needs. Routine salary raises for teachers, bus drivers, janitors and others increase expenses from year to year. So do increases in insurance premiums and higher costs for everything from gasoline to books, electricity and even paint.
The bottom line is that his plan won’t give schools the money they need to maintain present staffing and curriculum levels, let alone contend with rising enrollment. Meanwhile, both state and national governments demand schools constantly improve test scores on pain of being labeled failures.
At the same time, Schwarzenegger stands by his December declaration of a hospital financial “emergency,” which allowed him to delay for three years a law requiring a 1-to-5 ratio of nurses to patients in every hospital.
While taking that action, Schwarzenegger called nurses a “special interest.” The nurses union responded with ads saying yes, they do take a special interest – in their patients. “His action threatens the health and safety of tens of thousands of (patients),” the union claimed.
Nurses have since trailed Schwarzenegger to several public events, even forcing him off the red carpet and into a side door at one movie premiere.
Backing off either his de facto education funding cutback or the nurse staffing decreases he’s mandated would be a sensible move, and it just might come.
For Schwarzenegger gave no clue that he was about to abandon his government reorganization plan, either, until the destructive potential of the plan became apparent in public hearings of the Little Hoover Commission.
The negative effects of the other two areas are also plain, which makes one of them the governor’s next potential point of retreat or compromise.
