CA: A silent revolution

OC Register ^ | 4/22/04 | Jim Hinch

[NormsRevenge]

SACRAMENTO – A team of bureaucrats picked by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is quietly preparing a comprehensive reorganization of state government larger than any attempted in California history.

The plan, expected to be complete by April 30, would close down whole departments and consolidate others. Up to 200 state boards and commissions and 1,500 political appointees would be eliminated.

Administration officials declined to specify reorganization proposals. But interviews with those who have been briefed or interviewed by planners suggest several likely recommendations:

• Consolidate most energy regulation under a newly created energy secretary picked by the governor. Regulation now resides in various appointed, semi-independent commissions.

• Create a new Department of Public Health, which would coordinate various prevention, advocacy and information programs. Eliminate a statewide health-planning department.

• Consolidation of the Department of Corrections and the California Youth Authority into a single prisons department. Close several prisons.

[NormsRevenge]

It's a start.

[2banana]

Up to 200 state boards and commissions and 1,500 political appointees would be eliminated.

Terminated! A good step in the right direction. Now to deal with these government unions...

[blackie]

Sounds OK to me.

[TMD]

The following is by Maurice P. McTigue a distinguished visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he directs the government accountability project. Previously, he was a member of the New Zealand Parliament and New Zealand’s ambassador to Canada, and was closely involved in New Zealand’s deregulation of labor markets, deregulation of the transportation industry, and restructuring of the fishing industry through the creation of conservation incentives.

Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand

If we look back through history, growth in government has been a modern phenomenon. Beginning in the 1850s and lasting until the 1920s or ’30s, the government’s share of GDP in most of the world’s industrialized economies was about six percent. From that period onwards – and particularly since the 1950s – we’ve seen a massive explosion in government share of GDP, in some places as much as 35-45 percent. (In the case of Sweden, of course, it reached 65 percent, and Sweden nearly self-destructed as a result. It is now starting to dismantle some of its social programs to remain economically viable.) Can this situation be halted or even rolled back? My view, based upon personal experience, is that the answer is “yes.” But it requires high levels of transparency and significant consequences for bad decisions – and these are not easy things to bring about.

What we’re seeing around the world at the moment is what I would call a silent revolution, reflected in a change in how people view government accountability. The old idea of accountability simply held that government should spend money in accordance with appropriations. The new accountability is based on asking, “What did we get in public benefits as a result of the expenditure of money?” This is a question that has always been asked in business, but has not been the norm for governments. And those governments today that are struggling valiantly with this question are showing quite extraordinary results. This was certainly the basis of the successful reforms in my own country of New Zealand.

---snip----
http://www.hillsdale.edu/newimprimis/default.htm

Maybe there's hop after all.....

[mlbford2]

He better not cut funding for the 15yr study and preservation of the 'tripple-nippled blue throated salamander' or all hell will break loose.

[TMD]

Make that hope.....

[rellimpank]

Yes-for any of these "reorganizations" to work, all unnecessary employees should be fired--this never happens, unfortunately.

[goldstategop]

Cool. Much of California government is bloated, inefficient, and expensive. Reforming its size and changing the way it works could help to balance the budget without a tax increase. GO ARNOLD!!!

[Wolfstar]

Up to 200 state boards and commissions and 1,500 political appointees would be eliminated.

If Gov. Arnold accomplishes nothing else but this, the recall will have been worth the effort. Such boards, commissions, and political appointments are nothing more than patronage jobs created to reward political supporters of various politicians (whichever politicos who have the power to appoint someone to a given post). Since our legislature has been in Dem hands for what seems like forever, and since Gray Davis had been in office for five years before the recall, the vast majority of such appointees are Dems.

In addition, these unelected board members and commissioners are often overpaid for what little work they do, plus they essentially create law through regulation or interpretation of law/regulations. It's a vast, corrupt sewer that needs to be drained.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

"Whole departments," are going to be closed. Oh, the horror...

[Carry_Okie]

...they essentially create law through regulation or interpretation of law/regulations. It's a vast, corrupt sewer that needs to be drained.

If you think that is what Arnold intends, you need to be disabused.

[Smartass]

ARNOLD'S THE MAN.
DAVIS couldn't do it...the TERMINATOR will do it.

[Wolfstar]

I think you misread my post. I'm saying it's a good thing that Arnold may want to close down hundreds of boards and commissions, because those boards/commission are nothing but political patronage jobs — a form of payoff for having supported an elected state senator, assemblyman, governor, or other state officer. Such boards and commissions often exercise a lot of power. The state bureaucracy is bloated with such patronage positions, and I'd be delighted if Arnold can succeed in dumping them.

[Carry_Okie]

I think you misread my post.

Not a bit. As desirable as it may be to get rid of patronage jobs, you don't understand what's being done here.

The words "consolidate agencies to create efficiencies," are nearly always BS. Arnold hasn't cut diddly in the way of jobs. The regulatory functions aren't going away, indeed, they're getting worse (which is why I supplied you the link). They functions will just be handled within more layers of a massive State apparatus. Instead of boards and commissions, it will be handled by bureaucratic lifers who CAN'T be dumped.

If the history of school district consolidations is any guide, this just means fewer BIGGER agencies with less even accountability than now. It means the levers of power are closer to the governor, power that is for sale. One stop shopping as it were, but only to those capable of footing the six-figure price of a meal-ticket.

[RUCKUS INC.]

More like...
"You've been erased!"

[StoneColdGOP]

A page right out of the McClintock playbook.

[Uncle Hal]

Way to go Arnold. The Democrats and the elite media said the state could not cut the budget, at least to any degree. I hope he can get the legislature to agree, if he has to go through them.

[Wolfstar]

If you are correct in your assessment, then I did, in fact, not understand what is being done. I most definitely would not want to see the boards and commissions just replaced with bloated state agencies. I just want the boards and commissions to go away and not be replaced at all.

[Carry_Okie]

I just want the boards and commissions to go away and not be replaced at all.

Which is exactly what I understood you to mean and also what you are supposed to surmise from reading the story above.

Don't believe it for a minute.

Given the degree of control I expositeted in Arnold's environmental plan, given that his corporate financial supporters are co-aligned with this kind of manipulation, given the familial and political affiliations he and his advisers have with those eco-racketeering interests (who are the SAME NGOs who were behind Gray Davis), given that he has appointed environmental leftists to his chief regulatory agency positions, do you really think that Arnold is going to do away with the purpose or staff of those regulatory boards and commissions?

Not a chance. Arnold wants control closer to his vest. I wish I could say otherwise, but that just isn't how the regulatory game is played by the people with whom Arnold is affiliated. Honestly, I suggest you read that thread, all of it, and then slog through this post. The regulatory system doesn't work the way most people think it does, which is why it seems to keep producing results that nobody in their right mind would really want.