A proposal to fix California’s Government - Part 1

As I was alluding too yesterday, California’s government is not working. Individual members of the legislature or executive branches claim they are innocent, its not their fault, yet our State’s finances are a mess and worse, people are apathetic because they know their local representative does not have any reason to listen to them unless they are in the majority political view point in their district (a conservative person need not bother their representative if they live in San Francisco and a liberal person need not bother their representative if they live in Orange County and third party members need not bother at all).

Now since the government is the Legislative and Executive branches acting in concert, how can we bring accountability to the system as a whole? I believe Europe holds the answer.

We need a system where people’s view point will count and they won’t feel they have to vote for the Democrats or Republicans, but a smaller party can also play a vital role in the State.

We should move the ENTIRE Executive branch of the government into the Assembly, make the assembly elected by proportional representation and change the districts in the Senate so they represent one county each.

Now the above is a very loaded statement and I need to explain how I think each should work and then answer some of the objections I’ve thought of or heard. Other concerns or objections that I haven’t thought of, hopefully the blog owner (Rob) will allow them to post or they can just flame me.

Tutorial on California’s current government:
For those of you who slept in Civics class, here is the basic structure of the current government.

Executive Branch: These offices are elected by a State-wide vote

Governor – Like the president, he’s supposed to lead the State
Lieutenant Governor – Like the vice-president, however he becomes acting Governor when the
Governor leaves California
Secretary of State – Responsible for fair elections and other admin functions.
Attorney General – Head law enforcement person in the State
State Treasurer – Responsible for state finances, issuing debt, etc.
State Controller – Head bean counter, paying checks, balancing the books etc.
Superintendent of Public Instruction – In charge of all the public schools
Insurance Commissioner – In charge of regulating insurance companies in the State.

Legislative Branch: These offices are elected by single member district

The Assembly

There are 80 members of the Assembly, which acts as the State version of the House of Representatives. The members are elected and represent their district which can be adjusted every 10 years based on the censes. Each Assembly member’s district is based on population and all are supposed to have a similar base. Most legislation is proposed here and the budget and tax increases must be passed here before the Senate can vote or look at them.

The Senate

Currently the Senate consists of 40 members, each member representing 846,000 people according to their web page (http://www.sen.ca.gov). However, since the Senate districts are based on population like the Assembly only with larger districts, and they can only usually only act on legislation after the Assembly has, they are not in the news as much.
Now that I’ve blathered on how the system is currently setup (not counting the Judicial) and because this has gotten so long, will wait until next time to write how I envision the new system being setup.