Paradise Lost
Schrag, Peter
Future, he blames the initiative process for debasing public policymaking, leading the state away from the big and wise government of a generation ago and toward a polity divided by race and class,...
...Moreover, special-ed and other mandated programs for favored groups have been a greater drain on funds than Schrag's one-sentence, unquantified acknowledgment implies...
...f,'Unions and district administrators had measures and their...
...Schrag identifies the pivotal moment in California's fall from grace: the June 1978 passage of Proposition 13...
...Per-pupil expenditures on grades K-12, while actually now above those in 1970, have lagged behind the growth rate in many other states...
...Local school-tax measures are far fewer now because, as a result of Prop...
...He's passed four of them that by 2008 "will generate more than $16 billion for health and environmental projects...
...Mississippification" is the author's term for California's direction...
...z...
...The "professional" legislature christened in 1966 to the cheers of folks like Schrag didn't produce the wise laws that would win public confidence, and local officials did not acquit themselves any better...
...13, most school funding was shifted to the state...
...November, ended its resistance in late Big business—though it turned out to be Paradise Lost: California's April...
...Sacramento must now navigate a narrow channel between the populist demands of the right—no new taxes, law and order—and what Schrag shows have been crafty improvisations by the left...
...In many districts, there are old books, abandoned music classes, fewer counselors and nurses, and leaky roofs...
...What you will find in Paradise Lost is a thorough history of the electoral wars—especially the propositions—that have reshaped the megastate over the last few decades: the various Jarvis and Gann measures to curb taxes and spending (and Gov...
...98 constitutional amendment, which earmarks most new state revenue for schools...
...This is the story of how plebiscite politics has greatly replaced representative government in the nation's great social laboratory...
...the five auto-insurance propositions on one ballot in 1988...
...13 did serious and lasting damage to the fiscal health and proper functioning of state and local governments...
...Howard Jarvis, a political warhorse turned mouthpiece for Los Angeles apailment owners, had been stumping for years for relief from mounting property taxes...
...0...
...If there is some reasonable basis for this popular attitude—everything from superintendents who send tax-hike propaganda home with schoolchildren, to the long and corrupting dominance of state lawmaking by Willie Brown—you won't find much of it in this book...
...school busing...
...Twenty . -; '',, , ,.....:::„ - tition into the system...
...Imagine...
...13 in Experience, America's Future ing in larger numbers to California...
...A last chapter attempting to infer lessons for the rest of the U.S...
...13 was aimed at—at least in Orange County, where it passed 3 to i and where, as a reporter, I was assigned to find out what people wanted "cut"—was not schools but welfare, welfare, welfare...
...gh ou Alth TIM W. FERGUSON is the West Coast proud old liberal...
...1 . crats...
...Lawmaking by initiative is a rough and awkward method, and Schrag is right in many of his criticisms of such measures, and of the opportunists who position them for the ballot...
...r, used their influence in Sacramento to sometimes suspect prove- % ‘S . l% ,, Voters took the limit the number of these autonomous nance, most Californians i , . II...
...He paints few on the right as completely malevolent...
...California's Experience, America's...
...Salaries have risen appreciably, Schrag keenly notes, thanks to the California Teachers Association...
...of politicians an product of the Education Blob, had One person who does . and bureaufinally settled on a way to inject compe- not is Peter Schrag, for: .'y...
...78 July 1998 The American Spectator...
...and the Briggs Initiative to bar gay teachers...
...Future, he blames the initiative process for debasing public policymaking, leading the state away from the big and wise government of a generation ago and toward a polity divided by race and class, interested in nothing but the local neighborhood, and miserly about investing in other people's kids...
...1,:, i 4 . shut down...
...That's not bad for semiprivate government conducted by a man almost no one in California had ever heard of...
...College, which Schrag wishes were still free for the asking, now entails fees ranging up to several thousand dollars at the University of California...
...And yet, by the early 199o's —thanks in part to a formula that Governor Reagan had agreed to, and in spite of Prop...
...But for students, public institutions are not the open route into the middle class that they were back in the good old days of Gov...
...q most fundapublic schools to loo—for the state's near- plainly cherish this...
...i-/...:,- responsibility...
...mental lever of .,, ly 6 million students enrolled in kinder- device, introduced by Pro- ' .. , 5'' government, the garten through grade 12...
...Pete Wilson, who took punches from the teacher's union during the lean years of his tenure, is leading the charge for more school funds, but is trying to keep the money out of the hands of local boards, now dominated by the unions and inclined simply to fill the teachers' pockets...
...The larger issue—what spending has to do with school results—is not as settled as Schrag would have it seem...
...In previous tries at the initiative process, he had failed in the face of establishment warnings that radical tax reduction would threaten public services...
...As for the influence of racial and ethnic bias (a recurrent theme for Schrag as for most liberals), Oregon has lately seen a taxpayer revolt pose much the same challenge to the schools, and that state remains 90 percent white...
...There is a good reason why they have been—by popular initiativesterm-limited...
...T he public schools are central to Schrag's dark vision...
...But Caliarlier this year a coalition of Sili cials...
...ta5 wit the predicted 76 July 1 9 9 8 • The American Spectator doomsday didn't come, Schrag argues that it has been creeping up on the state ever since...
...What Prop...
...Schrag has kept a faith that most Californians long ago lost...
...Pat Brown...
...As Schrag explains, when Gov...
...Wilson at the depth of his unpopThe American Spectator • July 1998 77 ularity, and rejected because it promised to give him more power), the state's voters have never in my memory voted to give a dime to the "down-and-out...
...The tech com- gressives early in the cen- --, - - . li '.:- .. .1 taxing authority, munity, which suffers more than any tury as a way to resist the \ . . out of the hands other industry from the miserable medi- depredations of the railroads...
...Together with Sacramento conservative activist Paul Gann and a citizen the Politicians Won't brigade led by seniors fearful of being taxed out of their homes, Jarvis created a juggernaut that triumphed by 2-to-1 at the polls...
...Schrag portrays this episode as a comedy of Republican buffoonery, but what of the arrogance of Brown...
...power and I...
...As the case of charter schools demonstrates, an initiative is an effective way to send a message —and such messages are vitally necessary...
...Despite all the direct democracy decried in Paradise Lost, California hasn't dismantled the public sector...
...13—California had one of the highest AFDC payments and broadest eligibilities for benefits in the nation...
...But despite the subtitle, don't expect much explicit linkage to the country east of the Sierras...
...The Democrat- nineteen years the edi- ii, IN , years later, controlled legislature, staring at the tofial-page editor and now a {,,L ,:.,4-, ,111' they have .. ., . prospect of a popular initiative this columnist at the Sacramento eiji Z., t, , ,,,,,,4...
...In Paradise Lost: • • . 4 AMBIK,, i+ bureau chief of Forbes...
...Strong government unions pressure policy-makers at every level...
...Now Charter Schools will be com- the biggest beneficiary of Prop...
...Big Green" and the more successful enviro inspirations...
...This places him athwart a 30-year-long trend in California politics: one that has assigned the occupiers of government to virtually a criminal class...
...shee wailings from public can be used to employees about REVIEWED BY break the hold of :t-, '2 ''-- schools and firehouses Tim W. Ferguson vested interests -...`f:', ;;;-.,--.,-, .;:it...
...With one exception (a 1992 welfare-cutting initiative sponsored by Gov...
...For one thing, it isn't clear that public schools today enjoy less support than they did in the 196os...
...dollar terms—fought the measure with all Peter Schrag Here is an example of how California's its might, supplementing the usual banThe New Press /344 pages / $25 initiative process...
...There is a general relationship between input and output, but exceptions on the high and low ends of the spending scale are plentiful...
...George Deukmejian, "stubbornly resisting pleas from local officials, refunded $1.2 billion to the taxpayers," the education lobby responded with the Prop...
...For all his ideological liberalism, Schrag is fair-minded in telling the tale...
...I those believe in th '4,,, '''':.: -7-:: steam for an initiative to permit grouse over the .::*:, - I...
...By cutting property taxes by two-thirds and limiting all future levies, he holds, Prop...
...By 1978, with inflation and growth controls heating up several areas of the California real-estate market, taxpayer pain grew too acute for advocates of the existing order to Taking -the Initiative When assuage...
...number of ballot I 4...
...When in 1994 they finally kicked up their heels and narrowly but clearly opted to end Willie Brown's speakership with a GOP majority in the Assembly, he craftily held on to power for a year...
...But voters have not chosen to repeal any of their earlier handiwork, and they better than anyone know when they are being conned...
...1 1 omnibus funding mechanisms, loaded with whatever progressive pork will raise sufficient signatures to get the package qualified...
...yet to give it ,\^, 1 b Bee...
...Schrag argues that diminishing public support for schooling stems not onlyfrom the aging of the electorate but from its alienation from an increasingly nonwhite enrollment...
...And the voters themselves keep putting liberal Democrats—who are better politicians—into most offices but the governorship...
...This argument is flawed on many levels...
...Once state support became predominant, the pressure for it to increase has been unrelenting...
...You have to realize Schrag trusts public officials basically to do right with tax dollars, and wants them to have more...
...Isn't this the kind of thing a "nearly constant revolt [by voters] against representative government" is born of...
...Guess why the state remains first in the nation in per capita spending on fire departments, third on police...
...1 to f and ornians had lines ceased be _..,-,--.' '1, ,. --;4-..sfe-over elected offi...
...Meanwhile, "California's local governments are now run by officials who have never raised a tax and who don't understand the connection between services and taxes...
...Although the recession of the early 199os cut into this bounty, it is now coming on full force, and within a few more prosperous years it should bring school expenditures up noticeably...
...On the other hand, one of his heavies is Gerald Meral, who as director of the Planning and Conservation League has mastered assembling ballot measures that are actually'C Schrag trusts public officials to do right with tax dollars, and wants them to have more...
...Though .,::, E con Valley executives gathered they periodically !'i...
...Ronald Reagan's ill-fated effort, too...
...is thin and seems grafted on to satisfy the publishers, who are located at the City University of New York...
...To him, the Jarvis-Gann initiative epitomizes the reactionary and cynical tendencies of a cohort that came West eager to make a good life with quality public services and now, graying, wants none of the burdens of citizenship...
...The headstrong voters may have tamed the state judiciary by ousting Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues in 1986, thus chastening other state jurists up for confirmation, yet the federal courts continue to lord over the electorate's will...
...This brings us to the greatest gap between Schrag's philosophy and that of most Californians...
...4 entrusted with ..-----7.-,, more charter schools in California...
...Like his newspaper, Schrag is a 4 back...
Vol. 31 • July 1998 • No. 7
