By Cecilia J. Keehan
David Davenport, a professor of public policy and the former president of Pepperdine University, came to speak to the Los Altos Morning Forum April 21, on the topic “A Reform Agenda for the Golden State - Can Even the Terminator Reform California?”
The former attorney was concerned that the California dream was slowly developing into a full-time nightmare.
He used the analogy of planes crashing and burning, recalling that during the good times, California invested in several new programs.
Pointing to California’s present structural deficit of between $5 billion and $10 billion, he allowed that it will be much more difficult to add or support new programs.
Davenport admitted to having had reservations about voting for the governor-terminator, but on reflection, he decided to do so. We were electing an action hero, he said, and hoping for the best. He thinks the governor is doing a good job.
The governor recently appointed Davenport to the California Performance Review Quarterly.
The speaker told the audience that he has never voted for ballot propositions.
He recommended that the audience follow his lead. His view is that the Legislature is elected to pass bills and that he doesn’t want to read pages of proposition details.
In general, he is opposed to “direct democracy.”
Sharing a Rand study, he pointed out that California student achievement is near the bottom: 49th in the nation. Every year, one-third of students do not graduate.
Another “plane” that is crashing, according to the professor, is the California penal system, which now houses 164,000 people in prison at an annual cost of $31,000 per inmate. He said our correctional institutions are not correcting and that two-out-of-three former inmates will be arrested again.
He said the prison guard unions are getting salaries that are increasing at twice the rate of other employees’ salaries.
With the state in such a fiscal crisis, it has had insufficient funds to take care of the infrastructure - highways, water, sewage systems - and Davenport predicted there will be very little improvement over the years.
Davenport believes government has failed to step up to the plate.
Government, he observed, is not good at long-range strategic planning. “There is frustration on the part of the voters, and so our engagement goes down,” Davenport said.
Morning Forum is a members-only lecture series held at the United Methodist Church of Los Altos. To get on a waiting list for membership, write to: Morning Forum, P.O. Box 274, Los Altos 94023-0274.
