California Politics: California's dysfunctional version of direct democracy

This article makes reference to the current election season. But it's also one of the best brief descriptions of the problems the voters of California have created for ourselves by the use of the bludgeon of initiatives to make laws piecemeal. We the People Have Made a Mess by William Parent Los Angeles Times 02/29/04.

Since then [1978, when Proposition 13 created drastic restrictions on taxation], there also has been the implementation of electoral term limits, which has resulted in inexperienced legislators in leadership posts. We've had expensive referendums on three strikes, prisons, schools and roads. The state has also been bound by "no new taxes" promises and allowed legislators to draw their own districts along unyielding, partisan lines. In this atmosphere, California public policy has been defined largely by what people are against, like waste, the dominance of special interests and crime — politics driven by anger and resentment. In the process, we the people have made something of a mess.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's dazzling success in mobilizing political and public support for the bond and cap measures should not blind the state to the size of our mess or the size of the task that remains. California is still divided, broke, vulnerable to annual fiscal gridlocks, unable to adequately fund schools or provide for indigent children and the elderly and paying for a half-baked energy deregulation scheme. All the while, air quality is getting worse. … And the water? No one is even talking about the water.

The one thing he doesn't mention is that laws passed by statewide initiative or referendum cannot be amended by the legislature. They have to be changed by another statewide vote. Or by the courts, as many of them are, which is also a bad way to make law.