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Thanks, Pete.

What is it with Petaluma politics? Why is it that the resident political tribes find it necessary from time to time to work themselves into a frenzy?

A few years ago, the subject was Lafferty Ranch, a proposed regional park atop Sonoma Mountain. When asked to rate the most detestable human beings on earth, Lafferty partisans tended to rate cruel dictators first, followed closely by anyone with a different point of view about Lafferty Ranch.

Now comes the proposed Dutra asphalt plant, a controversy awash in righteous indignation.

Both Lafferty and Dutra can be counted among the controversies in which the principal combatants lose all sense of proportion - and there-after grant themselves license to replace common sense with name-calling and hyperbole.

When Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose wrote that long-time government watchers found the debate "churlish, disrespectful and downright counterproductive," Jane Hamilton, the former Petaluma city councilwoman, fired off an indignant reply, asserting there was nothing unusual about the proceedings.

"Yes, some people were annoying, tiresome and untruthful when trying to give their position extra validity," she wrote, "Yes, a few others were sarcastic, immature and melodramatic, but nothing truly abusive was said."

So, here we have the new normal - annoying, tiresome and untruthful, followed by sarcastic, immature and melodramatic. (If you wonder why many talented people won't have anything to do with politics, here's the answer in one sentence.)

Dutra backers want us to believe that the future of the local economy hangs in the balance, threatened by selfish NIMBYs and hypocrites eager to unload the responsibilities of modern life on to some other unsuspecting town.

The opponents claim that the project would forever poison the air and scar the landscape - destroying what one excitable fellow called "our Yosemite."

Note: For those who have never visited this stretch of the Petaluma River and nearby Shollenberger Park, it is a fine place to walk and experience a marshland environment. But If you go searching for Half Dome, El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls, you may be disappointed.

County supervisors are expected to reject the Dutra project next month. After initially expressing support, Supervisors Valerie Brown and Efren Carrillo changed their minds, citing concerns about permit enforcement, diesel emissions and noise.

If nothing else, this controversy demonstrates again the ability of environmental activists to mobilize the faithful. The greens generated a full-court press that enlisted hundreds of local people, plus the help of neighboring city councils and allies in the California Legislature. (Things are going so well in Sacramento that lawmakers have time to get involved in other issues.)

That's OK. For the last 40 years or so, disagreements over land-use decisions have defined our hometown politics. For inciting passions, no other issue comes close.

But there's a price to pay when these disagreements escalate into religious wars. As with Lafferty Ranch, the bitter memories of the Dutra controversy will shadow efforts to solve other local problems.

In case no one noticed, we've got a couple of other problems to worry about.

While Petaluma is at war over an asphalt plant, the country is experiencing the worst economic conditions in 70 years, businesses are going broke and many of our neighbors are out of work. A UCLA study last week warned that 60,000 government workers in California will lose their jobs in the coming months, pushing the state's jobless rate past 12 percent.

State government is on the verge of collapse. Young people are fleeing California in search of jobs and affordable housing. Schools programs are being gutted. Budget cuts will deny services to the people most in need, including children.

Petaluma, Rohnert Park and other cities - and county government, as well - are projecting broad lay-offs and deep cuts in police, fire, recreation and other services.

Where is our passion for the people who have lost their jobs, for the kids who won't have health care, for the people who won't find the help they need during a personal crisis, for the risks to public safety?

Also, the climate is changing. Maybe you didn't get the memo. Why aren't these activists showing the same passion when it comes to finding more money for bike lanes and transit, for finding new ways to conserve energy, or for new limits on water consumption?

Social scientists may explain why we become bogged down in the politics of recrimination. Perhaps activists like to use these emotional flashpoints to keep their constituents in line. Perhaps they fight because that's what they were programmed to do. Perhaps they contest an asphalt plant because it's easier than confronting a big, complicated world - facing climate change, economic dislocation and devastating cuts in social programs and education.

No doubt the opponents of the Dutra project feel excitement and vindication; no doubt the backers feel betrayed and embittered. As always, politics has winners and losers.

But we sacrifice too much of our energy, emotion and good will to these us-versus-them moments, forgetting that our world is changing and we'd better catch-up to those changes. After the Dutra fight is over, there will still be work to do if we want to live in a safe, prosperous and compassionate community.

Nineteen months ago, I wrote a column about young people leaving Sonoma County for places where housing was affordable, jobs were plentiful and the cost of living allowed time for family. (You can read the column here.)

Here was a new and different turn to the California story. For a long time, Californians couldn't imagine anyone would leave this special place, blessed by nature and the ingenuity of the generations that arrived after World War II.

But no one guarantees prosperity if people don't take care of their business. With neglect borne of complacency, California stopped being a place that offers the promise of success to future generations.

The Sacramento Bee today - read the story here - offers a new variation on the story of the California exodus. The paper reports young people are now moving to Oklahoma and Texas, reversing the "Dust Bowl" migration of the 1930s.

This is a familiar pattern, the story explains. In the last five years, more people left California for other states than the other way around.

Now, with state government on the verge of financial collapse, California faces new humiliations. Twenty-four billion dollars short of broke and with no idea how to reduce the shortfall, the state can't even borrow money.

With its resources, it wouldn't be difficult to restore the promise of California - but that won't happen without political leaders who can return our optimism and our faith in the future. Californians are many things right now, but optimistic isn't one of them.

This morning's shocking headline: "Legislature to miss budget deadline." What a surprise. The state Legislature hasn't missed a deadline since the last deadline.

The story by Staff Writer Derek Moore goes on to explain that the state may eliminate funding for the victims of domestic violence. In Sonoma County, according to YWCA Executive Director Denise Frey, that would mean the shuttering of the only shelter for women and children. It serves 300 people every year.

So, after many years of budgetary mismanagement in Sacramento, we have come to this: State government is as bloated as ever, but we may not have the money to protect women and children.

"Who would have thought that America's largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?"

-New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

When Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown announced last week that she wants to maintain funding for the Orenda Center drug and alcohol treatment program, an auditorium full of Orenda Center supporters cheered.

Which left Brown the unhappy task of sharing a basic lesson in civics and in the cruel calculus of budget cutting.

"Don't clap," she said. "This only means that some other program will have to go . . . For every hurrah, there will be a tear shed."

No doubt many also applauded last week when they read that Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, the Santa Rosa Democrat, decried state budget cuts as tantamount to "throwing women and children off the lifeboat."

It is heartbreaking that the most vulnerable among us will be harmed by the state's belated attempts to stave off the functional equivalent of bankruptcy.

But the question needs to be asked: Where were Evans and her cheering supporters while we were digging ourselves into this hole?

This is, after all, an entirely predictable outcome. This is what happens when government agrees to long-term financial commitments that it cannot afford, when it borrows against the future year after year, and when it refuses to set aside money for hard times.

When the state ran out of money - and it was going to run out of money - the most vulnerable would suffer because it's the state's job to look after people in need.

As state and local governments scramble to escape insolvency, we will hear more heartfelt pleas in the coming days. No more taxes, people will say. No more spending cuts. Don't increase tuition. Don't reduce money for classrooms. Don't close parks. Don't curtail human services and health care. Don't lay off state and local workers. Don't- don't- don't.

But the time is coming when Californians must put aside single-issue politics and recognize our shared responsibilities - recognize that our inability to compromise our differences has led to a crisis of governance that is horrible, sad and humiliating.

At a Sacramento gathering of good government types earlier this year, one speaker wondered out loud if state voters possess the "civic literacy" necessary to fix what's wrong with state government.

Here was the polite version of an uncomfortable, even rude question: Are Californians too selfish, too shortsighted, too partisan or too apathetic to be part of the solution to the state's political and economic meltdown?

Or put another way: Do you and I get the government we deserve?

We can all agree that our politicians are inept. As state government careens toward an economic debacle, the people we elected seem utterly incapable of stopping it.

But we voted for them, didn't we? And then we found ways to enable their bad behavior and dysfunction.

We passed a slew of single-subject ballot measures that combined to hamstring state and local government. We refused to acknowledge that Proposition 13 left hometown government at the mercy of bureaucrats and politicians in Sacramento. We acquiesced to an angry and mean-spirited politics that led many of our best and brightest to conclude that public service wasn't worth sacrificing their reputations and their families.

Most of all, we sat on our hands while the people in Sacramento and their special-interest friends were running government into a ditch.

It's true that our elections often don't leave us with good choices, but we can change that if we decide to pay attention. We can support deserving candidates, and we can reform an electoral process designed to protect the political insiders.

For California, the next two or three years are going to be tough.

Public schools, once the envy of the world, will continue to eliminate vital programs. The public improvements that generate economic development - streets and highways, water and wastewater facilities - will continue to deteriorate. People hammered by an economic recession will find government isn't there to help them find a job or a doctor for their kids. Things we take for granted - parks, for example, or convenient services from government offices - will go away. And crime rates will go up because we will have fewer cops, fewer prosecutors and fewer jail cells - and fewer programs that help people choose not to commit crimes.

Out of money, we are left with no choice but to make shortsighted decisions that will have long-term financial and human consequences.

What we don't yet know is what California will be like five years from now. Will we learn from this crisis? Will we take back our government? Or will we remain on the sidelines, while the state continues its slide toward mediocrity?

When Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown announced this afternoon that she wants to maintain funding for the Orenda Center drug and alcohol treatment program, Orenda Center supporters applauded. But Brown asked them to stop.

"Don't clap," she said, "This only means that some other program will have to go. . . For every hurrah, there will be a tear shed."

I dropped by the Board of Supervisors budget hearing this afternoon and soon learned that the supervisors are engaged in a thankless task. Their job is not keep the good programs and unload the rest. Their job is to reduce or eliminate worthy programs because tax revenues are declining and because local government is left with the scraps dispensed by a dysfunctional state government.

Health services director Rita Scardacci described the options: "One reduction is more horrible than another," she said.

Often, the short-term savings will lead to increased costs - in monetary and human terms - in future years, but government is broke with no prospect of improved fortunes any time soon.

Six years ago, the brawny movie star rode into town on a promise to kick butt and take names. Remember? Unfortunately, his good intentions ran headlong into the immoveable object. These days, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is just another garden-variety politician, humbled by his failure to slay the beast that is state government.

In Tuesday's special election, state voters all but disavowed their government and in the process handed Schwarzenegger an embarrassing defeat. An angry electorate wanted nothing to do with the latest hash of budgetary gimmicks designed to postpone the inevitable reckoning.

For most of the last decade, state government has been kicking the can down the road - refusing, in good times and bad, to bring spending in line with revenues. Now the economy is in the toilet, the bills are coming due, and there is nowhere to hide.

We're talking about furloughing cops and teachers, about the early release of prison inmates, about denying health care to children, about local agencies filing for bankruptcy, about a fire-prone state which may not be able to pay for fire protection.

We're talking about a state government abrograting its most basic responsibilities.

On Thursday, Staff Writer Guy Kovner filed an early tally of the damage to come - $16 million from the county general fund, $28 million from Sonoma County schools, $6.4 million from cities. These cuts, of course, are in addition to reductions imposed earlier in the year.

In the beginning, Schwarzenegger's mistake was believing that his celebrity and natural optimism would persuade political insiders to do what's best for California.

What he didn't understand is that the government is broken, and nothing will change until we fix it. Other candidates for governor will come along - they're lining up already - but it doesn't matter.

At a meeting of reform-minded groups last February, a Democratic state senator from Contra Costa provided an instructive metaphor for what state government has become. It's the Winchester Mystery House of governments, said Mark DeSaulnier, "We've built lots of rooms, but we didn't build hallways to connect them."

After decades of adding a room here and a room there, what we have is a government that doesn't work and can't work.

Inside the walls of the Capitol, the ideologues who control the Republican Party bear little resemblance to the Republicans you know in your hometown. These folks live in an alternate universe, a place where Calvin Coolidge is president and Rush Limbaugh is an intellectual giant.

The Democrats inside the Capitol owe their careers to public employees unions that believe it's OK to spend now and find the money later. They don't think government needs to be subject to the same economic realities as everyone else.

It would be impolite, of course, to mention the problems caused by voters such as you and me. Yes, we voted for more spending and lower taxes - and then complained about deficits. Yes, we voted for this ballot mandate and that ballot mandate - and then complained when government couldn't get out of its own way.

But we meant to do the right things, didn't we? So, I won't mention how you and I share responsibility for the sad state of California.

We live in "the ungovernable state," the Economist magazine informed us last week.

About Tuesday's election, the magazine explained, "The occasion has thus become an ugly summary of all that is wrong with California's governance, and that list is long."

California has become a state in which:

-The primary system disenfranchises mainstream voters - and protects the advantages of ideologues and special interests.

-Proposition 13 mandates a tax system that is, in equal parts, unjust, irrational and undemocratic.

-Local government has to beg state government for its leftovers.

-Every half-baked idea has a chance of being voted into law.

-A third of the legislators are granted the power to torpedo the will of the majority.

-The state's financial well-being is left to five people who lock themselves in a room at five minutes to midnight.

Why would anyone be surprised that this government doesn't work?

After years of mismanagement and last week's rejection of the latest stopgap measures, there will be hell to pay. Tens of thousands of government workers will lose their jobs. Programs once considered essential will be eliminated. (At a time in which students need extra help, the Petaluma school district closed its summer school last week.) Services to children, the disabled and the elderly will be slashed - or eliminated. Qualified students will be turned away from state universities. The list goes on.

Soon, perhaps in 2010, we will test whether Californians have the courage to unload a political system that is sinking of its own weight.

Reformers, including leaders of the Bay Area Council and the group call California Forward, want to ask voters to authorize a constitutional convention. (You can learn more at the Repair California Web site here.)

The complexities of a constitutional convention lend themselves to controversy. How will delegates be chosen? Will they be tasked to focus on a narrow list of topics, or invited to start over?

After six years of a governor who wanted to reform government, what we know is this: We can't prosper with a system we have now. We will fix it, or be doomed to more of the same.