Less than a week before Gov. Gray Davis is expected to announce
deep budget cuts statewide, former California State Assembly
Speaker Robert Hertzberg declared that the current state budget
crisis is “a political crisis, not a financial
crisis.”
In a lecture titled “California’s Crisis: Budgeting
in a Strait Jacket,” Hertzberg briefly discussed possible
solutions to the crisis to a mixed audience of businessmen, city
councilmembers and students.
Hertzberg spoke as this year’s guest speaker at the 19th
Annual Bollens-Ries Lecture that took place in the Covel Commons
Grand Horizon Room last Thursday.
Edmund Edelman, UCLA political science alumnus and currently
Senior Fellow at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, was the
moderator of the lecture who introduced Hertzberg as “a
practical politician who wants to accomplish things.”
Hertzberg gave a welcome accompanied by a recounting of his
childhood in which Edelman served as his mentor and a close family
friend, then started off his lecture by giving a brief background
about California’s financial landscape and the context of the
budget crisis.
Hertzberg said California’s economy is largely
“colonial” given the fact that many organizations are
based elsewhere and many workers are immigrants who send portions
of their paycheck back home, implying that a lot of money flows out
of the state annually.
Though California’s budget crisis is a common trend across
the nation, Hertzberg said given California’s unique history
and diversity, the budget crisis is that much more hard to
resolve.
Hertzberg advocated for the re-enactment of the Separation of
Sources Act to counteract Proposition 13.
One of Proposition 13’s three criteria include “the
state’s right to say where property tax money goes,” he
said.
The Separation of Sources Act was the product of reformers who
wanted to put property taxes toward the needs of the local
government rather than the state.
Hertzberg argued that such decentralization would be helpful to
the current financial crisis since it is hard to assign
accountability when such a large-unit state handles tax dollars.
Hertzberg argued “the way you solve this problem … is
through the relationship between state governments and local
governments.”
Allowing people to make their own choices, Hertzberg said, would
mean better allocation of resources for each city’s own
needs.
“Restructure cash flow and financial responsibility, and
the rest will follow,” Hertzberg said.
Hertzberg explained that the current members of Congress were
inadequate in representing their constituents due to the daunting
nature of carrying a state as large as California. The state is
divided into numerous arbitrary districts to create what Hertzberg
called a “Winchester Mystery House effect ““ everything
looks fine on its own, but put together is a mess.”
“If we’re going to solve this problem, we need to
work at a structural level,” Hertzberg stressed throughout
the lecture.
Current policies working toward reversing the deficit, Hertzberg
added, will only lead to “short-term solutions.”
Since the “state was never intended to be the operational
arm in assuring quality of life,” Hertzberg proposed that the
Separation of Sources Act be reenacted so cities and counties would
be able to put property tax money towards what the people deem most
important.
“I believe that there is an opportunity to pass an
initiative that will allow … recreation of local
authorities,” Hertzberg said of the act.
Due to difficulties in locating the lecture room, the lecture
got a delayed start that began with less than 30 people that grew
to more than 50 by the end of the hour.
Family members and former students of John Bollens and John
Ries, distinguished professors in the political science department
after whom the lecture series was named, were acknowledged by
Edelman at the event.