About four years ago, the electorate of California decided to take the unprecedented action of recalling their governor, Gray Davis, less than one year after reelecting him. While I thought that recalling Davis was the right thing to do, I never thought that such action alone would solve the considerable governance problems of “The Golden State.”

I worked alongside Davis while I served as a University of California regent. He is not a bad guy and was not as bad of a governor, overall, as he was portrayed. His downfall came, in large part, because a sizable share of the people of California had come to believe that his endless fundraising activities had compromised his ability to fairly govern California. Added to that perception was the fact that shortly after the election, Davis confirmed that California’s fiscal circumstances were considerably worse than he had represented during his campaign for reelection.

Despite our physical beauty from one end of our state to the other, California has a host of problems far too numerous to mention. But, at least some of them bear underscoring. First, we have too much government, as state and local governments and special districts abound. This government takes too big of a bite out of our personal incomes, not to mention our personal liberty. 

Our housing prices are unaffordable for a growing number of working households. Our infrastructure is deteriorating faster than it can be repaired or replaced. Unbridled immigration – legal and illegal – is occurring at a pace that makes it virtually impossible for us to properly plan to accommodate it and to assimilate those who come here with different cultures and speaking different languages. As a result, our hospitals, schools and prisons are overcrowded, and social tensions are always lurking beneath the surface. 

A growing number of businesses consider the business climate inhospitable and are headed for Nevada, Arizona and other more favorable business climates – or they are simply going out of business. Departing along with many businesses are many middle class families who fear the social and cultural changes that they see emerging in California, largely as a result of unbridled immigration.

The problems identified above – and many more – were prominent during the reign of Governor Davis, and they still haunt us. Now, many of our elected leaders tell us that “global warming” and the need for universal health care are also critical issues that must be addressed.  I must admit to being concerned about whether these later problems are as real as they are portrayed or whether they are part of the faddish character of political issues and politicians. But, that’s another story.

Regardless of the specific problems confronting Californians, and whether there is consensus or not about possible solutions, I think we can all agree that there must be a workable governance structure to address problems. That is where California is coming up most short – and that is being charitable.

The recent annual ordeal of adopting a State budget symbolizes the dysfunctional nature of California’s governance system. The solution is not to lower the threshold for budget approval, but to determine why it is that the legislature is so ineffective at performing arguably its most important task: adopting a budget. Perhaps, the entire system needs to be overhauled. I wonder whether a part-time legislature would be more motivated to get the job done on time, given less time to do its job.  Most of us seem to work best under pressure anyway. Has term limits produced the quality of legislators – “citizens from the real world” – that the concept promised?  I don’t think so; it needs to be reworked.  The basic problem is that the sum of the parts doesn’t equal the whole when it comes to the legislature. Most of them are individually decent, talented people with good intentions, but in the aggregate, their actions often are inconsistent with the overall views of Californians on a range of issues. The California Legislature can be grateful for public apathy and indifference, or there would be a revolution.

California ’s governance problems cannot be left solely at the doorstep of the legislature, however. Upon closer examination, we find that the muscleman from Hollywood has not lived up to our expectations either. The incumbent governor has been erratic in leadership style as well as substance. One year he has been a staunch proponent of smaller government; the next year he is leading the effort to expand government. I respect his desire to attract support from the widest possible spectrum of the California population, as long as that desire is not the cause for avoiding some of our state’s most pressing problems, such as how we the solve the issue of illegal immigration. 

Without doubt, things could be significantly worse without Arnold Schwarzenegger occupying “the corner office,” but contemplating how bad things might have been is not the definition of leadership.