Since the release of the Think Long Committee’s final report, A Blueprint to Renew California, last November, we have proceeded to act long, rolling out our proposed reforms on tax and governance over several election cycles stretching to 2018. The Think Long Committee is working with the legislature and governor, but is also engaging in the initiative process, in which the public votes directly on policies. 

Here are the three areas of immediate action:

1. We have joined with a bipartisan reform group, California Forward, to place the Government Performance and Accountability Act (GPAA) as an initiative on the November 2012 ballot. Our political action arm contributed $1.5 million to help gather the one million signatures necessary to qualify the proposition for a public vote.

As a new experiment in governance, we developed the elements of this initiative through a “deliberative poll” in which 400 citizens, chosen by sampling to represent the population as a whole, gathered to discuss, with the help of experts, what changes might make state government more responsive and effective.

The key elements that emerged include two-year performance-based budgeting, transparency in legislation to prevent back door deals at the last minute, devolution of power to localities by providing more flexibility in how they implement state programs, and greater discretion for the governor to make budget cuts when bipartisan agreement cannot be reached in the legislature.

These elements are all reflected in the GPAA on November’s ballot.

2. We are positioning our bipartisan tax reform for the 2014 general election along with advocating a Rainy Day Fund that would put away budget reserves for cyclical downturns. How we ultimately proceed will depend on the fate of other tax initiatives on the current 2012 ballot.

The Think Long tax plan would raise $10 billion in new revenues annually for paying down debt, education and local infrastructure by extending a sales tax to services (not now taxed in California, although services constitute half of the state’s $2 trillion economy) while reducing income taxes across the board in a way that retains the state’s progressive rate structure.

The need for tax reform remains clear. California’s deficit has ballooned to $17 billion as expected tax collections from capital gains and high-end earners failed to materialize with the depressed price of Facebook and other tech stocks after IPOs this year. Even though more than $1 billion has been cut from the University of California and CalState college budgets since 2008, the state still spends more on prisons than higher education.

3. Along with Laura Tyson – a Think Long and 21st Century Council member who was Bill Clinton’s top economic advisor -- and McKinsey’s Lenny Mendonca, we have been working together with the governor’s office on an infrastructure investment vehicle that can attract large institutional investors – from California’s own Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) to the China Investment Corporation (CIC) – to projects in California. Presently, the state has a $750 billion infrastructure deficit.

As part of this effort, our institute arranged a meeting between Governor Jerry Brown and Gao Xiqing, president of CIC, to explore investment opportunities for China in California.