For Gary Hart, Santa Barbara’s most influential Sacramento representative for two decades, there’s a good reason why the state capitol evolved into a political clown show.
“Term limits have been a disaster,” he says of the 1990 initiative that now prohibits long legislative careers like his. “Legislators now do not focus as much on the policy work as on the musical chairs of political work — ‘What’s the next office I’m going to run for?’”
A policy wonk in winter, the 68-year-old Hart was just elected board chair of the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), the state’s most prominent think tank devoted to Sacramento politics and policy. The independent and nonpartisan San Francisco–based organization produces a steady stream of statewide surveys and original research that introduce high-quality, neutral information into the fog of partisanship and ideology routinely shaping decision-making in the Capitol.