Repair California, a public policy advocacy group initiated by the Bay Area Council, has been holding meetings throughout the state to encourage residents to vote for a constitutional convention aimed at fixing what the group describes as a broken state government.

 

More than 100 people listened as Wilson and other speakers discussed reasons behind Repair California's call for an overhaul of the state constitution. The first ballot measure would allow voters to start a convention and a second ballot measure would ask voters if they support holding one immediately.

The central debate was the process behind the delegate selection process for a constitutional convention.

Many in the audience like Reed L. Royalty, president of the Orange County Taxpayers Association, said he feared union groups' collective bargaining power may dominate the delegation process.

Wilson echoed similar concerns: "As employment grown, all the money that is collected as dues...has gone for political war chess and these war chess win elections."

However, Wilson--who inherited a $14.3 billion budget gap when he entered office in 1991 and left a $14 billion budget surplus when his second term ended in 1999--added that a constitutional convention in essence would allow Californians to update the state system at the grassroots level.

For instance he said, putting a spending cap on government to prevent deficit spending, demanding full and immediate disclosure of campaign contributions to cleanse political agendas, and empowering the governor with more appointing power to make him or her more accountable.

 

To assist in achieving such reforms, former democratic state senator, Joe Dunn, suggested using former legislators, who he said no longer have a stake in politics, as delegates for the convention.

 

"If you are a general going into battle-- and you could have a wonderful battle plan-- but if you don't know the terrain, you're likely to lose," Dunn said.

 

Some panel speakers such as Jon Fleischman and Steve Young opposed a constitutional convention.

 "Until we deal with the pervasive influence of the unions, I'm against pursuing a constitutional convention because I believe the unions will hijack the process and the end result would be a constitution that creates bigger and larger government," said Fleischman, Flashreport.org publisher.

Young, an attorney and regional director of the CA Democratic Party, called the plan a recipe for disaster because it could create a second tier of government, cost thousands of dollars to operate, use ill-informed citizen delegates, and be a waste of effort since state redistricting will be in 2011.

Dan Walters, a Sacramento Bee columnist, said the turning point in CA politics was the state's conversion to a full-time legislature in 1966 and such passages as Proposition 13 in 1978, which limited property taxes to 1-percent and therefore removed a major source of revenue for local government services.

 "The legislature was pulling inward at the same time its responsibilities were pulling outward," Walters said. "[A constitutional convention] is worth trying simply because of the alternative. And the alternative is more of the same."

Steven Hill, director of the Political Reform Program at New America Foundation, said the discussion within the constitutional convention would be limited to areas of governance, elections, budgets, and the relationship between local and state government.

"So things having to do with civil rights or any sort of those issues would not be part of this constitutional convention," Hill said. "This is not that dramatic as it's being portrayed. Other states every 10 or 15 or 20 years, they automatically call a constitutional convention."

 "Governor Schwarzenegger has indicated he is supportive of the constitutional convention," Hill said.

Lenny Mendonca, a director in McKinsey and Co. and executive committee member of Bay Area Council, compares the advantages of a constitutional convention to Wikipedia.

"This is going to be the most public initiative writing process in history," said Mendonca, who shared how his nephew recently received a notice from a college stating that it could no longer afford to keep his nephew due to cuts in state education funding.

Currently only a two-thirds vote in the state legislature can start a constitutional convention.

Repair California plans to finalize and submit language for the two measures to the attorney general on Sept. 25. Then the group would have to gather enough signatures to get the measures go on the general election ballot in November 2010.

Alex Mershon, 13, from Corona asked one panel of speakers whether they think the state should be split into different regions.

 

"No," Dunn told Mershon.

 

"Every time we face problems we have to commit to each other. That's what kept the nation," Dunn said.

 

Before the meeting ended, Hill asked who in the audience would participate in a constitutional convention if he or she were chosen as a delegate.

An overwhelming majority lifted their hands.