A hugely expanding California population has exerted pressure on the half-century-old infrastructure dating to the governorships of Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight, and Pat
Brown. The results have been manifold: aging school and other public buildings, crowded and deteriorating highways, increased health-care needs, and teeming prisons. This is not to say that infrastructure matters have been ignored since that earlier time. Rather they have not received the funding necessary to keep pace with growing demands for quality public education, efficient transit, accessible and affordable medical services, and more incarceration facilities.
The proud possessor of one of the nation’s model K-12 systems of public education in the 1950s and 1960s, the state’s schools have plummeted in quality in more recent decades. In mid-August 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that according to just-released Department of Education findings California students, grades 2 to 11, made “moderate gains in English and math on standardized test scores.” Overall, 54 percent scored at the “proficient” level in English and 50 percent scored proficient or better in math. The newspaper reported a “sharp achievement gap separating Asian and white students from Latino and black students.” These results indicate some improvement, but show that much remains to be done. Educators give many reasons for the overall decline in quality of public education. Importantly, the state ranks low - 43rd in 2011 - in spending per pupil. Since Proposition 13 (see Chapter 13), funding has become increasingly problematic. Proposition 98, enacted in 1988, aimed at investing about 40 percent of the state’s budget in public education. However, dwindling available revenues and other factors have undercut public school financing under that measure. Then, too, Governor Schwarzenegger failed to restore the $2 billion he borrowed from the measure’s fund. In addition to being underfunded, the state’s schools must teach students from vastly different cultures and language traditions, which greatly complicates the tasks of education. The large number of high-school graduates underprepared in terms of job market skills hurts the state’s businesses and economy.
Statewide, public higher education has fared better than the K-12 system, especially in terms of reputation. Though the state’s share of the costs for educating college/university students has steadily declined during recent decades, the UCs have continued to be highly rated. In the 2011 Times Higher Education Supplement (London) ranking of universities, public and private, for teaching and research, UC Berkeley placed fourth worldwide. Among American universities, only Harvard and MIT bested Berkeley. UCLA and UC San Diego ranked 12th and 30th respectively. UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgenau reported that in 2004 the state provided 35 percent of his university’s funding and in 2011 just 12 percent. For the first time in the history of the UCs, students in 2011 paid a greater portion of the cost of their education than did the state. UC officials say the present funding level renders the operation of the system unsustainable. The 23 CSUs and 112 community colleges (the nation’s largest system of higher education) have, likewise, suffered from deep budget cuts. In fact, recent reductions in public funding have become so draconian that commentators are increasingly asking whether California’s vaunted Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960 (see Chapter 12) is still viable.
To address the state’s deteriorating transportation system of highways and bridges, voters passed in November 2006 a measure to raise $19.9 billion through the sale of general obligation bonds, that is, fundraising instruments requiring no collateral assets of the issuer. Gas taxes, federal funds, and private investments were part of the total financial
Figure 14.3 UC Berkeley and the Bay as seen from the hill above the campus. Photo: Ginger T. Osborne.
Package. This measure was part of Governor Schwarzenegger’s ambitious 10-year Strategic Growth Plan to upgrade California’s infrastructure. The monies allocated to transportation, $107 billion, were to be used to relieve traffic congestion, particularly in the Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, and the Los Angeles Basin, as well as to promote highway safety and reduce pollution. Meanwhile, light rail transit made headway in the traffic-congested Los Angeles Basin. In addition to operating interurban Metro Blue Lines, Red Lines, and Green Lines, inner-city Los Angeles was connected by rail links to outlying areas in Ventura, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties.
Health care constitutes another key segment of the state’s infrastructure. At the same time that California has been a world leader in medical technologies and treatments, in the early 2000s it ranks near the bottom of states making health care available to low-income families. State law requires that hospital emergency rooms admit anyone in an emergency condition, yet rising costs for treatment in these expensive urgent-care facilities have been resulting in some closures. While Medi-Cal offers health coverage for
Low-income people, still 8.4 million Californians had no medical insurance in 2010 according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation aimed at providing health insurance for children. Though Phil Angelides campaigned for the governorship in 2006 on a platform calling for a government-operated system of universal health care, that possibility was dashed by his defeat. Despite tight resources, California has been a national leader in funding research and treatment for AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) sufferers.
Like schools, roads, and hospitals, prisons are a major component of the state’s infrastructure. California has America’s largest prisoner population. No state-run facilities are more crowded than its 33 prisons, housing some 140,000 inmates. These institutions were built to hold 80,000 individuals. With reference to the cockroaches, rodents, standing water, broken plumbing, and filth found in her own and other penal institutions, Jeanne Woodford, former San Quentin warden for 27 years, declared recently: “These prisons are falling apart.” In late May 2011 she told a Los Angeles Times columnist that California incarcerates “many more prisoners than is necessary for the safety of the public.” That same month in Brown v. Plata the U. S. Supreme Court, in a 5:4 decision, concluded that California’s prison conditions were so appalling as to be in violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, outlawing “cruel and unusual punishment.” Accordingly, the court ordered the state to reduce its prison population by about 30,000 during the next two years. Serious budget constraints are likely to play a major role in how the Golden State manages prison and other criminal justice-related issues in the near future.
World History
