For Immediate Release

California's prospects in the new decade will ride on its ability to answer the two big, linked questions that the final year of its lost decade left hanging. Can it summon the energy and leadership to fix a system that, in its current shape, makes the state ungovernable? And...can California rekindle the forward-looking spirit of innovation and public investment that, through much of the last century, made the state a model of shared prosperity?

With a budget deficit, high unemployment, and foreclosures, California will spend the New Year tackling the symptoms of a larger problem. While these areas need attention, Mark Paul points out in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee that, "California's real trouble is that its current system of government, misshapen by decades of piecemeal changes, is no longer capable of dealing with its problems."

The May 19th special election, explains Mr. Paul, exposed the major problems with California's governance system:

Here was California governance in all its glory: three political systems and two contradictory governing principles - majority rule and rule by consensus - in collision. Voters created a legislative majority, which was forced to bend to the minority, leading to a supermajority compromise, which was then overridden by a majority of voters, leaving the budget in disarray.

And here was the lesson: California doesn't work because it can't work.

California's leaders need to focus on the cause of California's dysfunction: its failed system of governance.

Mark Paul, formerly deputy state treasurer, is senior scholar and deputy director of the California program at the New America Foundation. He is the co-author, with Joe Mathews, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It, to be published by University of California Press in June.

The full article is available here: http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2010/the_oh_decade_25914

For media requests, please contact Elizabeth Wu at (510) 295-9859 or wu@newamerica.net.