”
At that point, I did not think about money. I thought about the
fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being
some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus. Just to be
recognized.
”
“At that point, I did not think about money. I thought about the fame, about just being the greatest. I was dreaming about being some dictator of a country or some savior like Jesus. Just to be recognized.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, reflecting on his thinking while a body-building beginner.
There is little doubt California government needs change. But this state needs neither a dictator nor a savior.
There are plenty of good ideas in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newly proposed overhaul of state government, composed by his business-dominated California Performance Review team.
These include the notion that public university students should do community service in order to graduate, already a requirement at many private high schools and some private universities. Who could quarrel with consolidating some – but not all – of the many state boards and commissions that now serve at least in part as cushy sinecures for termed-out legislators and cronies of highly-placed politicians like the governor, the Assembly speaker and the president pro-tem of the state Senate.
Where this plan goes awry is in its bald attempt to concentrate power. Nowhere is that more clear than in the area of education. The Schwarzenegger plan proposes a new state Department of Education and Work Force Preparation to set education policy for every public school student from kindergarten through graduate and professional schools. There’s also a new Education and Work Force Council, which would aim to compel schools to stress technical courses targeted at specific jobs and skills.
There are flaws galore in this reasoning, but the central one is that these two new departments would supersede the current education structure, making the elected superintendent of schools little more than an errand boy for unelected appointees who would head both departments and make policy.
In short, Schwarzenegger apparently wants to be not just the kindergarten cop he once played in a movie, but would like to dictate all education policy for the entire state. The recent sorry performance of his current education secretary, Richard Riordan, in wrongly and (possibly) facetiously telling a small child that her name translates to “dirty little girl'” ought to serve as a cautionary note about the quality of potential appointees to the newly powerful slots this plan would create.
Another red flag here is that it leaves unclear the role of locally-elected school boards. A third is the fact that no matter how popular he is, Schwarzenegger can’t be governor beyond 2010. In what has become a strongly Democratic state, that reality should be a caution to Republicans in the Legislature: They may like the idea of Schwarzenegger taking over education now, but what of future governors who may be Democrats?
For some, this plan appears to resemble the realization of a wish list long held by California Republicans who have long wanted to eliminate most state government regulatory authority of all kinds.
The Schwarzenegger plan would, for example, eliminate the state Occupational Safety and Health appeals board, the
Cal-OSHA standards board, the Industrial Welfare Commission and the Contractors State Licensing Board, consolidating all their functions under the state Business and Transportation Agency.
That’s fine, as long as the agency has enough people and money to do the job. But Schwarzenegger’s approach has been consistently anti-regulation on many fronts, so what are the odds of adequate funding to protect workers or those who hire contractors?
Essentially, Schwarzenegger seeks to centralize authority of many types in much larger agencies under his direct control. No problem, if those agencies continue current oversight functions. But the administration estimates this plan would save as much as $32 billion over five years.
You don’t reach savings like that merely by lopping a few dozen board members and commissioners. You only save that many billions when you cut hundreds, maybe thousands, of employees who now do actual field inspections and other oversight.
“This is not just about power, but the ability to do necessary jobs'” says Democratic state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, long an advocate of workers rights. “Schwarzenegger’s personal agenda might be empire building, as the old Rolling Stone interview suggests, but you also have to remember that many people around him have worked for 10 years and more to eliminate most regulatory authority. This is not just his agenda, but what the Republicans in the Legislature have wanted for years.”
The bottom line: If this plan ever becomes law, either legislatively or via a ballot initiative, it will only pass because of Schwarzenegger’s personal popularity. And that would be the height of irony, for many of the people who stand and cheer the governor at all his carefully staged public events are among those who stand to be hurt the most if he eliminates protections of many kinds now enjoyed by workers and consumers.
