The State of the States

Most people feel that state governments are dull, and getting duller. To say this one does not have to agree with those would-be Cassandras who moan that the federal government is preempting all fields of activity and is putting the state governments out of business. The lack of creative planning by state governments is a result not so much of an inferior position in the federal system as of political circumstance.

Ten years ago, most large states (most Americans live in the nine largest states) had Democratic governors and Republican legislatures. The governors pleaded for liberal legislation, and the legislatures characteristically did nothing. As a result, by 1955 state spending on education (largest item in most state budgets), welfare, and public health was lagging behind the postwar growth in the cost of living and the size of the private sector. In the last ten years, the states have been making up this lost ground. Most notably, expenditures on education have more than doubled as costs rose and the postwar baby boom came of age.

The necessity for increased expenditures had political repercussions. During the recession years 1957-62 taxes had to rise often more than once. Thought legislative majorities were usually entrenched by malapportionment, governors found themselves increasingly unpopular, and in 1962, most of the governors running for reelection were defeated. By contrast, only five incumbent U.S. Senators were beaten.

After this carnage, and after legislative reapportionment, most of the large states were left with Republican governors and Democratic legislatures. These legislatures now vote high budgets for education and welfare (while welfare costs have risen very slowly), and the governors, influenced by the liberal aura of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, dutifully sign them into law.

Unfortunately, these legislators are just not prepared to be beyond the issues of the 1950s. They are badly underpaid and unable to devote full time to state problems. Their leaders are too often left over from the dreary days before reapportionment, and most legislators do not have time to do much more than clear the paper off their desks. Even in the large states, most legislators do not have their own secretaries, much less any staff assistants.

The Republican governors and their staffs are usually too interested in the politics of presidential nominations to spend much time or though on state problems. They have to commit themselves to a limited role for government to please Republican Party bosses and delegates. Besides, they can win a solid national reputation with the help of Time, etc., by looking efficient and beaming while signing bills.

The states are thus assured a role as arenas for political combat. The Democratics in the legislatures can go on sniping at the Republican governors, who can go on winning elections with the help of heavy advertising and good-guy images. But meanwhile the states are missing the opportunity to initiate new programs to attack the still-unsolved problems of the poverty cycle, education, mass transit, and housing segregation. The money will be there. as the Vietnam war overheats the economy, most state revenues will continue to rapidly without new taxes. Present levels of spending on education can be maintained as the ratio of the children to tax payers declines.

But the imagination that has been visible in the governments of cities like Boston and Philadelphia and Detroit has not appeared at the state level. It is a bad sign that the only big city mayor who has shown an interest in becoming governor of his state is Samuel Yorty of Los Angels.

States may ultimately find a role in solving problems hitherto reserved for the cities--and the federal government. Everyone knows that as the middle class flees to the suburbs, cities' tax bases tend to shrink, while their needs for revenue, generated by the presence of increasing numbers of poor people, continue to grow. Political scientists have often urged the formation of metropolitan governments, but city home rule-one of the great causes of urban reform in the first years of this century--allows suburbs to refuse to be joined to the less affluent cities. (Fear of racial desegregation also plays a role.) Although metropolitan unification is impossible in most areas, there is nothing to prevent the state from acting as a sort of metropolitan government, particularly since the majority of residents of states like New York, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and Massachusetts live in a single metropolitan area.

Present state officials do not see themselves in such a metropolitan role, and there is always the possibility that a suburban-outside combine will veto measures designed to solve primarily urban problems. Meanwhile, the game of state politics is becoming increasingly monotonous, and most voters will probably remain content to leave the same familiar, comfortable people in office at election time.

The danger, then, is that the state governments will continue to do their present jobs a little better and to ignore the jobs they might do. Their decline may come not with a whimper but a yawn.