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California needs an alliance between good government and small government forces

April 5, 2023

Let’s face it: California has almost zero chance of becoming a small government, red state in the foreseeable future. A large majority of voters prefer extensive government services and the high taxes they require. Many of the conservatives that brought us Proposition 13 have passed away, retired, or moved away.

But within California’s big government majority, many are concerned with public sector inefficiency and dysfunction. If our government can’t even get the small things right, how is it supposed to tackle the big issues?

There are those out there fighting for more efficient government service. Govern for California is an example of good government group that sometimes breaks with ruling party orthodoxies, as it advocates“actions to increase government performance and accountability” and opposes legislation “detrimental to the public interest.”

Libertarians and free market conservatives often oppose government action because they recognize that spontaneous order outperforms centrally formulated top-down solutions. Sacramento bureaucrats lack detailed knowledge of what’s happening in Calexico or Redding and are thus not in a good position to dictate what their residents should be doing. Even within a town or neighborhood, people working together voluntarily can solve problems better than local officials.

But we should recognize that while government solutions are generally inferior, some governments execute better than others. California often comes up short relative to other states on quality-of-life measures because its government performs poorly relative to its peers.

For example, the state of California has now failed to complete its audited financial statements within the federally established nine-month deadline for the last five years in a row. It is failing to produce financial statements on time despite spending $1 billion on a new financial system. No other state government has been so consistently late.

Late financial statements don’t impact the day-to-day lives of most Californians, but other government failures do. State and local government’s inability to address homelessness and public disorder are driving people away from urban downtowns, and, to an increasing extent, transit.

Despite spending billions on the issue, California’s share of unsheltered homeless far exceeds its share of the US population. And weather is not a sufficient explanation: Florida and Texas have much lower rates of homelessness rates than we do.

Libertarians, reform Democrats, and conservatives apply different lenses to the issue, with the latter groups more focused on the state’s lax enforcement of drug laws. The libertarian critique focuses on state and local policies that drive up the cost of housing. But most would agree that Los Angeles’ response, in the form of Measure HHH, has created very few new units at very high costs despite its $1.2 billion price tag.

Transportation is another clear case of government failure. While the state spends tens of billions on an endless high-speed rail project in the Central Valley, both Northern and Southern California struggle with traffic congestion. While reform Democrats might not agree that the state has underinvested in highways, they often share the belief that transit agencies are inefficiently run and fail to provide a safe, inviting environment to potential riders.

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Small government and good government advocates are also concerned about the low quality of public education across much of the state. In the 2021-22 school year, critics with varying ideological perspectives found common ground in opposition to excessive school closures which most other states avoided.

Now that schools are open, the groups’ approaches may differ as reform Democrats focus on ways to improve traditional public schools, while conservatives and libertarians would like to see more money going to private schools, and, possibly, charters. Perhaps the two groups can agree that some degree of choice is required, even if that choice is sometimes limited to multiple public schools within or across districts.

Whether the issue is homelessness, transportation, or education, all of us critical of the Sacramento establishment should agree on greater accountability. All major California public agencies should have strong auditors or inspectors general. Revelations from independent watchdogs like these could make California government less wasteful, even if it remains bigger than we would like.

Marc Joffe is a federalism and state policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

Orange County Register

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California needs an alliance between good government and small government forces

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