A glimmer of light hassuddenly entered the oppressive darkness of California's specialelections prospects, though it is a feeble one indeed. Against allexpectations by politicians both Left and Right (to say nothing ofcommentators), one of the ballot measures is beginning to gather speed.Ordinarily, such a thing is hardly cause for celebration (bills arewritten with the express intention of being appealing, after all), butin this case, the choice of propositions reveals aninteresting moral trend in California voters, a trend which is eithercommon sensical or profoundly dangerous.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that the infamous moderate Abel Maldonado is "winning the hearts of the public with his ballot measure, Proposition 1F."
Wait a minute. You mean the legislative pay freezing Proposition 1F? Where do you think we are, a democracy?
Admittedly,as ballot measures go, 1F is the least difficult one to stomach, as itdoes not hit most of California's people and, at least from the voters'perspective, only targets those responsible for not being capableleaders.
Apparently furious with tergiversating legislators and sick ofbeing lied to about the future, California's people would doubtlesslysee themselves as victims, and Proposition 1F is one way for them toget justice against the cynical politicians in Sacramento.
After all,most people think legislators should feel the pain just the wayeveryone else does. It is probably this sort of "make the bums pay"sentiment which motivates the editorial board of the San Jose MercuryNews to opine: "While the savingsunder this proposition would not be significant, we agree withMaldonado that legislators need to share in the pain when the state'sfiscal house is not in order."
Inother words, forget about the the numbers, this is about morality. Moralconsiderations are hardly irrelevant in this case. Indeed, assumingthat the politicians involved would actually feel the pain,then the support for 1F might be a valuable asset if only as a reminderto legislators that playing endlessly with other peoples' money hasrepercussions (a lesson which the Democratically controlled legislaturecould use). However, it is not clear that this will actually occur, forthe simple reason that California's legislators are in a perfectposition to become well-greased crypto-lobbyists.
Consider the following: California's legislature is probably one ofthe most partisan in the nation. The Mercury News called it "overlypartisan" and while such an assessment begs the question of whetherthere is an optimal level of partisanship, there is little doubt thatthe "blame the other guy" style of politics is rampant in California.At the point where the bickering between parties on the legislativefloor frequently sounds like a debate between Barbra Streisand and RushLimbaugh, one can safely claim that the legislature is hyper-partisan.
The question is whether this has implications for 1F, and quitearguably, it does. Removing legislative pay might feel good morally,but it actually creates incentives for an increase in corruption. Theirrhetoric aside, legislators are not children, and will not take a slapon the wrist because they know they deserve it. They will look foroutside contributions to offset the money they lose.
In any other state, this would not be a problem, but Californiahosts some of the most well-heeled lobbying organizations in thecountry. Among Democrats, contributions from labor unionsand Hollywood are only too thick on the ground, and even Republicanshave the perpetual appeal to anti-tax activism and the NRA to sustainthem. Assuming these groups still want to have undercover lobbyists inthe legislature (which some of them already have enjoyed historically), the limitation of legislative pay will not make the legislature less partisan. It will make it more partisan as public money is replaced by lobbyist dollars.
This contingency relies on a number of pessimistic assumptionsbeing true, but it should give the potentially pro-1F voter pause.After all, nobody wants the legislature to turn into an episode of Crossfire. Oh wait...