Thomas Elias

Tom Elias is an independent columnist who was the first journalist to write about the possibility of a recall of then-California Gov. Gray Davis. He weighs in with a new column in which he says that for all the interest and excitement the recall and Davis' susccessor Arnold Schwarzenegger have sparked, the state is no  better off than it would have been without the recall.

In California, Thomas Elias may be the most important voice you've never heard of. Elias, an independent journalist whose column in appears mostly in smaller papers over the state, was arguably the first person to circulate the notion of a recall of then Gov. Gray Davis just after his re-election in 2002. (Other folks took it and ran from there).

Elias reports and thinks deeply, and gets into the guts of the issue. Now, almost alone, he offers a column not about the politics of Gov. Schwarzeneggger and his reform efforts (the preoccupation of Sacramento) but about the substance of the governor's proposals. Today, Elias looks at budget reform, and he raises important points. His main problem is that Schwarzenegger's budget plans, which have only been loosely outlined, would give far too much power to the governor's office. Governors could make mid-year cuts, set aside money for reserves and in some cases, suspend laws all by themselves. Elias sees this as dictatorship. Having sat through legislative budget hearings, your blogger wonders if a little bit of dictatorship in making budget adjustments might not be such a bad idea. Whatever the case, Elias deserves credit for trying to spark a debate on the nuts and bolts of this. California voters, after all, may have vote on a "reform" plan of some kind this November--six months away.