Gov. Brown focuses on legacy in final address
SACRAMENTO — In the opening scene of his final act on California’s most prestigious political stage, Gov. Jerry Brown used much of his last State of the State address to remind everyone, in California and across the nation, of what’s been accomplished in recent years.
“Very few places in the world can match that record,” he said Thursday to an audience of state lawmakers and guests gathered in the Assembly chamber of the state Capitol.
While Brown offered a few suggestions for how lawmakers should spend the year, the speech may have been less notable for its specific content than for the moment it marked in the political odyssey of the man who wrote and delivered it.
Most modern California governors have used the State of the State address to lay out sweeping or targeted policy plans for the year ahead, a custom usually followed by Brown during his first tour of duty in the 1970s and ‘80s.
In contrast, the bulk of his recent speeches have been either an ode to the state’s rugged past or a prophecy of its fragile economic future.
This time, the veteran governor chose to deliver an impassioned defense of several items on his to-do list that either have struggled or stalled during recent years — projects that will be far from complete by the time he hands the reins to a successor next January.
In praising the bullet train effort, Brown offered some of his most extensive remarks in years on the project’s worthiness. “I make no bones about it,” he said. “I like trains, and I like high-speed trains even better.”
He reminded lawmakers in the audience that former governor and President Ronald Reagan promised in 1983 the Golden State would build a highspeed train.
“Yes, there are critics, there are lawsuits and there are countless obstacles,” Brown said, his voice rising, “but California was built on dreams and perseverance, and the bolder path is still our way forward.”
The governor took time to praise the efforts of the Legislature in recent years on topics ranging from the state’s finances to a slight lowering of the future burden of paying for public employee pensions.
Passage of these and other efforts “demonstrates that some American governments can actually get something done,” he said.
That oblique reference to Washington was one of several derisive comments in his speech about President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. He criticized their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to unplug from global efforts on climate change.
On the role of humans in making the planet warmer, Brown said, “All nations agree except one, and that is solely because of one man: our current president.”
“You, Republicans, as I look over here and I look over there,” Brown said with a wry smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back!”
The governor linked the challenges posed by the elevated risk of natural disaster to California’s devastating season of wildfires and promised to soon convene a task force to suggest possible changes in the state’s firefighting strategy.
“Over the last 40 years, California’s fire season has increased 78 days,” he said, “and in some places, it is nearly year-round.”
Less prominent in the half-hour speech (one of his longest) was the governor’s familiar plea for politicians to be circumspect about the rate of growth in government spending, a key tenet of the $190.3 billion budget blueprint he outlined two weeks ago. Assembly Democrats have largely embraced Brown’s approach, while party leaders in the Senate have suggested some of the money might be better served in boosting programs that target California’s most needy.
Instead, he offered a much broader view of the road his administration has traveled the past seven years — ticking off accomplishments on a redistribution of K-12 education dollars to disadvantaged students, more money for the state’s colleges and universities and a rethinking of whether criminal justice programs should be as much about rehabilitation as incarceration.
“My plea is relatively straightforward: take time to understand how our system of crime and punishment has evolved, how other states and countries have devised their prison systems and what changes might we now make,” Brown said. “I urge that instead of enacting new laws because of horrible crimes and lurid headlines, you consider the overall system and what it might need and what truly protects public safety.”
While the day clearly belonged to Brown, who turns 80 in April, the event nonetheless offered a sense of how little time he has left before term limits will force him from office. Two prominent Democrats who are running to succeed him were in attendance as constitutional officers: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Treasurer John Chiang. A Republican contender, Huntington Beach Assemblyman Travis Allen, watched quietly from his desk on the Assembly floor.
Brown did not mention the race, nor offered any advice for the person who will occupy the office next. When he hands off the job, Brown is likely to leave with the support of a solid majority of Californians. A statewide poll last month found 53 percent of those surveyed like the way he is doing the job, and an equal number said things in the state were generally going in the right direction. State officials said last week that unemployment in California fell to 4.3 percent in December — the lowest number in any research dating to early 1976.