Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposals to realign local services and redevelopment are a great public service. Not because they represent deep change – they don't – but because they expose the broad and bipartisan consensus against any meaningful overhaul of California's broken governing system.
The broad opposition to Brown's redevelopment and realignment arguments illustrates the extent to which our state has acclimated itself to the afterworld of Proposition 13, even though it robs us of our ability to govern ourselves democratically and condemns our children to a shabbier life.