California Gov. Gavin Newsom has set out to “Trump-proof” California, but in one sense he’s too late. According to NBC News, 38.3 percent of Californians voted for Trump, by some accounts 40 percent, so as people across the country should know, Newsom’s crusade must involve something else. (RELATED: California Voters Reject ‘California Values’)
President-elect Trump has placed entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked to slim down the bloated government. Californians can easily find state agencies that should be eliminated, such as the Coastal Commission. (RELATED: Restoring the California Dream)
The unelected commissioners recently made news by opposing an increase in Musk’s SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County. This was due not to environmental concerns but Musk’s participation in the election. Newsom said “I’m with Elon,” but the commissioners, some appointed by the governor, are “friends of mine.”
In 2022, the governor’s friends rejected a desalination plant that would have provided arid Orange County with 50 million gallons of fresh water a day. Commissioner Dayna Bochco, president of Steven Bochco Productions explained that “the ocean is under attack from climate change already.” A CCC commissioner since 2011, Bochco was reappointed last year.
The Commission overrides scores of elected city and government officials, all fully capable of handling their own affairs, and runs roughshod over property rights. No governor, including Republicans George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, has attempted to eliminate the CCC, hardly the state’s only wasteful body.
Before they reach students in the classroom, Californians’ tax dollars must trickle down through multiple layers of bureaucratic sediment. These include the 58 county offices of education, which serve as “support systems for their local school districts and as liaisons for the state.” Like the local districts, the county offices employ superintendents, who absorb huge amounts of taxpayer dollars.
According to Transparent California, Los Angeles County Office of Education Superintendent Debra Duardo bags an annual pay package of $508,402, more than the president of the United States and more than double Newsom’s $201,553. Deputy County Superintendent Maria Martinez Poulin pulls down $343,887, and “education officer” Maricela Ramirez is not far behind at $340,458.
In the Sacramento County office, Superintendent David Gordon draws a total pay of $447,287 and Deputy Superintendent Masami Herota gets $324,921. This is for services that could easily be performed by the local school districts, whose non-teaching officials are also overpaid.
For example, the Ontario-Montclair school district pays Superintendent Phillip Hammond a stunning $743,596, empowered by a “series of opaque perks” that make Hammond the state’s highest-paid administrator. Chief business official Phillip Hillman bags a not-too-shabby $350,619.
Bureaucratic bloat is also evident in the state’s tax system.
The Franchise Tax Board (FTB), the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA), and the State Board of Equalization (SBE) are all responsible for the collection of taxes in some form. So is California’s Employment Development Department (EDD) “one of the largest tax collection agencies in the nation,” collecting more than $81 billion in payroll taxes in 2018-19 alone. How this revenue is spent is another matter.
Under the supervision of Julie Su, California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) boss, the EDD was responsible for $30 billion in unemployment fraud, with convicts and out-of-state fraudsters alike cashing in. Despite that record, Su was the Biden–Harris administration’s choice for Labor secretary, never confirmed by the Senate but still in power at this writing.
If Californians believed that four tax agencies are too many it would be hard to blame them. In a similar style, eliminating the costly county offices of education could help more tax dollars to reach students in the classroom.
Over in Washington, the federal Department of Education was a payoff to the teacher unions that supported Jimmy Carter for president in 1976. As the 1983 A Nation at Risk report confirmed, the new department did nothing to improve student achievement. Musk and Ramaswamy have a strong case to eliminate the department, one of many expensive and counterproductive bureaucracies.
Nothing of the sort is going on in California, and people across the nation should not be fooled. Newsom’s push to “Trump-proof” California is an effort to reform-proof the state that needs reform the most.
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
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