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Contributor
John
Campbell
John
Campbell (R-Irvine) is an Assemblyman representing the 70th
District
in Orange County. Mr. Campbell is the Vice-Chairman of the Assembly
Budget Committee. He is the only CPA in the California State
legislature
and recently received a national award as Freshman Republican
Legislator of the Year. He represents the cities of Newport
Beach,
Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Tustin, Aliso Viejo, Laguna
Woods and Lake Forest. He can be reached through his Assembly
website
and through the website
for his California Senate campaign. [go to Campbell index]
 CPR
DOA?...
[John Campbell] 8/9/04
Acronyms
are pervasive in the activities of large government and large
business.
One of course associates the letters "CPR" with
cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Although not technically an acronym
(since you can't pronounce CPR as a word), it has become a term
to itself.
But in this case,
the double-entendre "acronym" stands
for Governor Schwarzenegger's just released "California
Performance Review." Unless you are living with the Amish,
you probably already know that this is the report outlining a
proposal to completely streamline and restructure California
State government to make it more efficient and bring it into
the 21st century. This is the follow-through on the governor's
pledge to "blow up the boxes" and the last time anything
like this was attempted was during the administration of Governor
Ronald Reagan.
As this thing has been developing, I thought it was likely
to have little opposition. It doesn't eliminate any dollars going
to support the needy and does not eliminate government functions.
What it does is reduce the amount of bureaucracy and agency duplication
that exists to deliver that support and perform those functions.
Who could be opposed to less bureaucracy and more efficient government?
Nobody, right?
Wrong. State Senate
Pro-Tem John Burton declared the CPR as DOA before he had even
seen it. Democratic leadership and self-appointed
union-supported "watchdogs" are regaling how this will
end life as we know it in California (just as the recall and
not increasing taxes was supposed to do). Here are a few corrections
to their claims:
- CPR is about
eliminating bureaucracy, not programs and support for needy
or education or the environment. The opposition is
mainly public employee unions who have an agenda of hiring more
state employees, paying them more, having them work less and
work shorter, increasing their pensions and taxing you to do
it. CPR will downsize the bureaucracy through attrition and require
performance in order to earn a merit pay increase. How novel
is that!!! Anyway, the union bosses hate that stuff. But they
know they can't say that so they hide behind the lie of how this
will hurt the poor and the environment and education.
- CPR has
1200 separate recommendations. Even I will probably only agree
with about 1000 to 1100 of them. But you don't throw out the
big idea because of a few problem details. If I had to take or
leave the whole thing, I'd take it.
- Opponents
say this is a "power
grab" by the Governor. That could not be farther from the
truth. One of any governor's biggest sources of power is the
number of political appointments he or she has. Just ask Gray
Davis how he used those to consolidate his power. In this proposal,
Governor Schwarzenegger is giving up somewhere around 1000 of
those appointments. He is giving up power, not taking it. And
the truth of the matter is that most of the agencies are under
executive control now anyway. What's really happening is the
phalanx of bureaucrats who wield huge power from the dark corners
of the org chart will cede power under CPR to more visible appointees.
This is admittedly
a big idea. So was the recall. We are in a time that is ripe
for big ideas to change our structural problems.
Let's not let small thinking get in the way. CRO
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