Bad Timing: Growth and Stinginess

The "Save Our State" (SOS) proposition claims that excluding undocumented residents from social service benefits and compelling public agencies to report suspected immigration law violators would help revive the California dream.

To be sure, a terrifying and all-too-familiar litany of population growth woes resounds throughout the state; schools, public health care, water, roadways and transportation are all strained to the breaking point.

Will propositions like SOS plan for growth and a healthy future for the state? Or will they try to shut uncloseable doors, ignoring that California's success earlier in this century was due to growth-by-design, not no-growth chance?

Population growth has been a constant in California for nearly two centuries. From 1940 to 1960, when the state grew faster than at any time since the Gold Rush of 1849, the population expanded by a-phenomenal 136 percent.

From 1970 to 1990, the state actually experienced one of its lowest rates of growth in the century, expanding by less than 50 percent. Major metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego have population densities half that of cities like Toronto or Paris.

The variable in the quality-of-life equation is not growth itself but society's response to (and management of) population expansion. In contrast to earlier decades, the strong no-growth tendency in the Anglo electorate views any further expansion, irrespective of ethnicity, as a burden and danger. This comes at a time when the Latino population is growing and the Anglo population is stagnant.

During the Goodyear period of 136 percent growth, when the state's population was around 90 percent Anglo, a sufficiently widespread civic vision of California society allowed the state's basic infrastructure to expand at a rate equal to or ahead of population growth.

Freeways, water systems, public schools and universities all were expanding rapidly, with vision and planning for up to 20 years into the future. The public was willing to finance such massive investments; bond issues were routinely passed by wide margins. Clearly, growth itself was not seen as a problem.

By contrast, the period from about 1970 to the present may be characterized as one of willful neglect of the state's infrastructure. For very different ideological reasons, the administrations of Governors Edmund G. ("Jerry") Brown Jr., George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson have refused to continue investing in the California vision and have allowed public investment to stagnate.

Although prison construction has advanced, few major public works have been undertaken in transportation, education, health, water or the environment. As a result of this lack of investment, population growth began to outpace infrastructure development, despite a significantly slower growth rate.

Because the lack of investment began when the Latino population began to expand rapidly, especially in comparison to Anglo population growth, Latinos are blamed for overcrowded schools, traffic congestion and water shortages.

Yet the tax/support base for public service and infrastructure development is significantly larger now than during 1940-1960, when California was investing in its future. In 1950, at the heart of the era of strong infrastructure development, the ratio of working-age adults to dependent children (under 15 years old) was 1.7 to one. Today the taxpayer-to-child ratio has improved considerably, to 2.9 adults for each child.

Two important features of population growth and public investment should be considered:

• Any population growth, irrespective of ethnicity, means overcrowded schools and overutilized infrastructure simply because the state has lost the will to invest in itself since the early 1970s. That population growth did occur largely in the Latino population is an unfortunate coincidence.

• Given the overwhelming majority of Anglos in the California electorate, any change in the policy of willful noninvestment in the state is a decision that must be made by Anglo voters.

Clearly California is suffering from a lack of vision similar to the one held by much of the state in the 1940-1960 period. If such a vision does not emerge once again, and propositions like SOS determine California's approach to growth, Latino strengths will not be realized and their potential contribution to the state will be lost.

David E. Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health at the UCLA School of Medicine, is co-author of "The Burden of Support: The Young Latino Population in an Aging American Society." This commentary is adapted from "The California-Mexico Connection."