Study of State Governments Ranks California With a Capital C (Minus)
Sacramento — It's now official: California government has hit rock bottom.
State governments don't get any worse, anywhere.
That isn't a Republican or a Democratic assessment. It's the judgment of a respected national magazine for policy wonks: Governing, published by Congressional Quarterly, a pillar of nonpartisanship.
The monthly mag examines the nitty-gritty, basically boring details of government and is read by 85,000 state and local officials and politicians.
It just completed an in-depth study of all state governments -- a "government performance project" -- conducted by a large team of academicians and journalists and funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Then it graded each state.
California rated a C-minus. That was bottom of the heap, along with only one other state: Alabama.
Graded at the top were Virginia and Utah, each with an A-minus.
To put this in perspective, there were a lot of states the magazine didn't rave about. It issued a C or C-plus to 18 others. It graded 27 in the B range. The average grade was a B-minus.
California's neighbors -- among our stiffest competitors for jobs and investment -- got these grades: Arizona, B; Nevada, B-minus; Oregon, C-plus.
Some big states: Texas, B; New York, B-minus; Florida, B-minus; Illinois, C-plus.
What grabbed my attention was the top of the California story:
"People who work in California government" -- Note: governors especially -- "love to talk about how their state dwarfs entire countries in both population and economy. Well, everybody needs something to be proud of. They certainly can't talk about how the state dwarfs anyone in the quality of its management. When it comes to management, California is the dwarf."
Whoa! Wasn't this cheap-shot, California bashing? But I knew deep down that the writer was close to the mark.
I called the man, project co-editor Richard Greene. No, Greene replied, he had never been turned down for a job in California, never been denied admission to a university nor had any other reason to hold a grudge against the state.
"California has been kind of lousy-managed for a long time," he said. "This just reflects that the state still is doing a lot of the same things wrong."
Continuing with the magazine story:
