California’s Constitution

California is broken.  So what’s next?

As the notion of California as ungovernable grows stronger than ever, Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has expressed support for a convention to address such things as the state’s arcane budget requirements and its process for proliferate ballot initiatives, both of which necessitated Tuesday’s statewide vote on budget matters approved months ago by state lawmakers.

“There could not be more of a tipping point,” said Jim Wunderman, chief executive of the Bay Area Council, a business group that moved forward on Wednesday with plans to push for a constitutional convention. “We think the interest is going to grow by orders of magnitude now.”

I’m actually in favor of this idea, even though it would almost certainly turn into a circus of unparalleled proportions.  Latter day Madisons and Hamiltons are thin on the ground here in the Golden State.

But — just to remind everyone: in order to even hold a constitutional convention, it has to be put on the ballot and approved by a majority of the electorate.  And how does the question get put on the ballot?  It has to be approved by two-thirds of the legislature.  But this is the problem we’re trying to solve in the first place: to pass a budget or raise taxes takes a two-thirds vote of the legislature, and Republicans have enough votes to stop that from happening.  Votes that they use regularly.  So why wouldn’t they also stand in the way of a constitutional convention whose main purpose would almost certainly be to remove the two-thirds requirements for passing a budget and raising taxes?

Now, maybe sheer desperation would get a few of them on board.  Maybe some kind of backroom deal could be arranged.  Who knows?  But one way or another, you have to get two-thirds of the legislature to agree to it.  That’s a problem we obviously haven’t solved yet.