Gov. Jerry Brown plows ahead on massive projects

http://www.insidebayarea.com/california/ci_21183002/gov-jerry-brown-plows-ahead-massive-projects

At a time when 49 of the country's 50 governors would probably be playing it safe -- after all, he is trying to convince voters that it's in their interest to raise their own taxes -- Brown is boldly backing two mammoth public-works projects, calling his critics "fearful men" and "declinists," and using the S-word while the TV cameras are rolling. He's zagging when most governors would be zigging.

Think Gov. Pat Brown on steroids.

While Brown speaks often of his great-grandfather's pioneering spirit in risking his journey west in the 1850s, he increasingly seems to be channeling his late father, whose own legacy was built on huge infrastructure projects.

"Can we govern ourselves? Can we make decisions?" Brown asked Wednesday at a news conference unveiling a $23 billion project to build two tunnels underneath the Delta to transport water from Northern California to Southern California. "Can we make the investments needed to keep our economy and our culture and our society prospering?"

Longtime Capitol observers also say the governor is showing signs of the same impatience with the slow, creaky pace of government that led him to be on the constant lookout for higher office in his earlier gubernatorial stint, from 1973 to 1983. Only now, that impatience may have more to do with his sense that life is finite -- that at 74, he has only so much time to help turn around the state.

"I think he thinks this is his shot, this is his platform. And he's setting the stage for a second term when the economy rebounds."

Indeed, Brown, as he dropped the S-Bomb to reporters Wednesday in reinforcing the notion that he just wanted to get "stuff done," alluded to his own mortality as he spoke poignantly about just returning from the funeral of one of his best friends.

"This will be a real test of the democratic process," Brown said Wednesday.

The governor's critics say he is biting off too much in an economy that remains stagnant -- and that he is heading down a perilous political path as he seeks voter approval of Proposition 30, which would hike taxes on the wealthy and boost the state sales tax by a quarter cent.

While Brown might be seeing this as his last chance to build on his father's legacy, the difference is that Brown's father governed at a time when voters had more faith in government, said Rarick, author of a biography of Pat Brown, who governed the Golden State from 1959 to 1966.

Brown was defiant -- even toward some of his allies -- in rebuffing critics of the water project, saying the state's dire water situation and the environmental problems in the Delta had been studied to death, so he's refusing to get bogged down in "analysis paralysis."

Alluding to the still-listless economy, Brown said he won't join those who want to "climb in a hole and wait till it all blows over."

**Opinion**

Good for him! I agree. Despite economic uncertainty, the state still needs to be led in the right direction.