UCSD's Instructional Television (ITV) presented viewers a fine first-night-of-Chanukah gift late last night (Tuesday, Dec. 7)—a tape of a thought-provoking lecture delivered in November by Robert Hertzberg, the former speaker of the California Assembly who now is running for mayor of Los Angeles.

That Hertzberg was in San Diego, instead of campaigning in Los Angeles, bespeaks this Democratic  landsman's great interest in the subject of re-inventing local government, not only in Los Angeles but throughout California.

Hertzberg suggested that local governments are programmed to fail, not by design, but as the unintended consequence of a series of decisions made at other levels of government. The federal government collects $60 billion in taxes from Californians, he said.  If the federal government took half, and shared the other half with the state and local governments, there'd be more than enough  for California to solve its financial crisis and for local governments to address their needs.

Howard Jarvis' famous Proposition 13 of  1978 tightened the strait jacket on local government. Not only did it restrict property taxes to 1 percent of assessed valuation, but it also paved the way for property tax revenues to be diverted by the state from local governments to other causes, according to Hertzberg.

Cash-starved cities therefore devise ways to generate more sales tax revenue—a portion of which is returned by the state government to the localities where they are generated.  Thus building a Wal-Mart, shopping mall, and automobile mall become priorities, whether or not they represent good planning.

Whereas local governments once competed with other cities across the United States to attract or retain industry, today their competitors may be anywhere in the world where lower wages prevail. Additionally, if port cities like Los Angeles and San Diego fail to handle cargoes quickly, they may find that Pacific Rim shipping companies are willing to spend 12 extra days at sea to take their goods to East Coast cities like New York, and thereby eliminate the need to move the goods overland by truck or rail.

California has 58 counties, but Hertzberg said he believes a commission set up by former Gov. Pete Wilson was correct when, for conceptual purposes, it divided California into nine separate regions—one of which is comprised by San Diego and Imperial Counties, which sit on the international border with Mexico.  Another is Hertzberg's own Greater Los Angeles region including the urban areas of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura Counties.

Although Hertzberg defined the problems for local governments, he did not have sufficient time in the hour program to lay out solutions. On the one hand, problems are regional, and revenue-sharing arrangements may be appropriate.  Hertzberg pointedly commented that a small city like Carlsbad, with its large "Car Country" mall, sits on a surplus, while other cities in the San Diego region struggle.  On the other hand, Hertzberg—with an eye towards his secessionist constituency in the San Fernando Valley—said citizens prefer to interact local governments that are smaller and more geographically accessible.  —Donald H. Harrison