Truckee Town Hall Meeting – Repair California

Yesterday Jennifer and I went to a meeting at the Truckee High School Auditorium which was put on by the Sierra Business Council whose offices are in Truckee, CA.  The meeting was to encourage citizens to support the grass roots movement to call for a California Constitutional Convention.  These are all big words to me, only an English Major, but I am glad I went because now I think I have a little better understanding of why we are having so much trouble in this state getting anything done.  It was explained to the audience that our State Constitution has been amended so many times that it essentially has made the document unmanageable.   I like to make the analogy of a roof.  You can put only so many patches on the roof before the roof looses its integrity and in order to keep the protection of the roof, it would be best to just replace it.

Several of the panelists made the comments that our legislators are working with their hands tied behind their back because the current State Constitution has too many conflicting, outdated and outmoded initiatives binding them.

The group “Repair California” would suggest that we tackle only a small part of the constitution first and those would be in areas of the budget, election reform, governance and the state/local fiscal relationship.  There are a lot of hoops for this organization to jump through but they propose to work through these and get this initiative (to call for a Constitutional Convention)on the ballot by November 2010, with the resulting convention to be held in 2011.

Panelists were Jim Wunderman, Bay Area Council; Assemblyman Ted Gaines, CA State Assembly, District 4; Supervisor Norma Santiago, Eldorado County, District 5; Supervisor Ted Owens, Nevada County, District 5; Derek Cressman, Common Cause; and John Grubb, Bay Area Council.   Moderators were Steve Frisch, Sierra Business Council and Maia Schneider, former Mayor of Truckee.

I am grateful for these people who are trying to help this state move itself ahead.  The point was well taken, it is not the people in the legislature that are stonewalling any progress, it is the outdated, outmoded DOCUMENT.  Maybe we can give our public servants something worthwhile to work with.   If you care to get involved or become more informed, check out the Repair California website here.  This, at least at first blush, is not politics, just common sense!!

by Kappy Mann