1) Dan Walters makes a pretty good case in his column from the Sacramento Bee that California is pretty dysfunctional when it comes to its political structure, especially evident in the incessant wrangling around the state budget.
However, it might be that California voters are smarter than often portrayed, and have—by their voting behavior which is probably determined by a sort of random coming to consensus from a regular (more irregular for the squeamish) following of the shenanigans in Sacramento—set it up this way, a point made in this article from the Wall Street Journal.
An excerpt.
“The Democratic field is so crowded because the assumption is that California will revert to its natural voting patterns and elect a Democrat to follow Arnold. But Republicans argue that California voters have now established a habit of electing Republicans to the executive office to check the excesses of the Democratic legislature. Republicans have held the governor's office for 29 of the last 42 years; at the same time, Democrats have controlled both houses of the legislature for all but three years during that period. That's clearly a vote for divided government.”
2) The policy that developers build 15% of all developments for low-income housing will drive developers from the city, and those stalwart builders who do not want to take government subsidies to build their projects should be praised rather than the rather harsh perspective expressed in this Bee editorial.
Communities are optimally built by the private builders and local government working together, with the city easing the way and the builder creating a community all can be proud of, of which we are fortunate in Sacramento that we—to a large extent—do have.
