I THINK IT'S APPARENT to most Democrats in California that after six years of a Republican actor as governor, it's time to elect a qualified candidate from among our own ranks in 2010. But please forgive me if I'm underwhelmed by our choices right now.

The indefatigable Jerry Brown hasn't even officially declared yet and has already raised seven times as much money as his nearest Democratic competitor, Gavin Newsom, a likeable but flawed candidate.

On the short list of alternates often mentioned is Jackie Speier, a dynamic freshman Congresswoman from San Mateo. So when I was recently invited to hear her speak at a luncheon hosted by the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara County, I happily accepted.

With a friendly nature, indomitable spirit and ambition to spare, the popular Speier spent 18 years in Sacramento in both the Assembly and the Senate and was elected with 75 percent of the vote last fall to the 12th Congressional District. She lost a primary contest for lieutenant governor in 2006 by a very narrow margin to John Garamendi.

Few in the mostly female audience disagreed with her assessment that we need more women in public office. "The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world," Speier said, quoting Charles Malik, former president of the United Nations.

But while California has two female senators, currently only 17 percent of the U.S. House is female. And giving up her House seat to run for governor would be a "difficult" decision, she said.

But we urgently need someone who isn't afraid to stand up to the special interests, Speier maintained. "I won't support anyone who won't take on the prison guards union."

That's a pretty fearless statement considering the California Correctional Peace Officers Association is one of the most powerful unions in the state and has funded many an independent expenditure attack on candidates who cross them.

But Speier is well known for her courage. While a young staffer to Congressman Leo Ryan in 1978, she was part of the delegation ambushed in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple. She was shot five times, left for dead and waited 22 hours for medical attention. Congressman Ryan and four others were murdered. The next day, more than 900 members of the cult committed suicide.

In 1993, Speier's first husband died in a car crash while she was pregnant with their second child.

AND SO, IN COMPARISON, political obstacles seem far less formidable. She's been a prolific legislator with more than 300 bills signed into law, many focusing on consumer protection issues and financial reform, and she chaired the state Senate committee investigating fraud in state government. On her first day in Congress, she delivered a gutsy but rousing speech against the Iraq war.

Speier recently held a town hall forum on health care in her district which was peaceful. "There is no point in pursuing health care reform without a public option," she said. What would she do to fix California politics? Get rid of term limits (which give us a perpetual crop of rookies) or limit each legislator to 12 years, jettison the two-thirds vote needed to pass a budget and bring on open primaries (which will encourage moderates).

So perhaps instead of a fake action hero for governor, we've found a real one.

Go Jackie!

IT SOMETIMES TAKES the threat of losing an old friend to make you appreciate just how much you need him, and so it has been with the announced closing of the H.P. Wright Library in Ventura.

A source of comfort, entertainment, and a home away from home for many Venturans, the Wright is a victim of budget cutbacks in the County Library System. The closing has sparked an uprising of sorts in Ventura which has secretly pleased me. To see an organized effort of this sort for a facility of knowledge is truly remarkable in an age when so many other things compete for our attention.

Long supportive of efforts by the San Buenaventura Friends of the Library to privately raise money to keep the facility open, I recently joined a group of my fellow Venturans on the newly convened Ventura Library Plan Steering Committee.

In these dog days of budget cuts, our group of motivated citizens is the substitute for the $100,000 library plan exercise axed from the city's budget last year.

"It's time to have this conversation and see it through to the end," Deputy Mayor Bill Fulton told us last week.

The Wright is losing its lease from Ventura College in 2015 and chances are it won't be renewed. A smaller facility than the E.P. Foster Library Downtown, it's unable to house the collections of both libraries and does not have a meeting room or computer center. The much smaller Avenue Library receives money from federal sources. So the Wright was targeted for closure by the county in an effort to consolidate and save money it doesn't have any more.

But it's the most popular library in the city, with a circulation of 210,556, thus the uprising.

San Buenaventura Friends of the Library has raised enough money to keep the facility open until late October. If the Ventura sales tax measure passes in November, with the added revenue, the facility could potentially stay open until the lease is up in 2015, at least. If not, well, it's likely the Friends will give up the effort and the facility will close.

A DENIZEN OF THE EAST END, I must admit to traveling more frequently to the Oxnard Library when my children were very young in the late '90s. A larger, newer facility with a better children's collection, the city-run library had predictable hours, which our three Ventura libraries have never had. The now-closed bookstore Adventures for Kids drew us out as well.

But we've also spent time in the comfy beanbag chairs at the Wright, talked to the friendly librarians who obviously love their jobs, and watched the students trail over from Foothill High after school.

The city has property available in the Community Park on Kimball Road near the 126 Freeway to build a large, new facility for the entire city, but doesn't have the funding identified. I envy the cities of Camarillo and Oxnard for their new state-of-the art facilities. In 1997, a comprehensive study recommended the city withdraw from the County Library System altogether, but we never followed through.

LIbraries of the future may need to look very different than they do today. Books can be downloaded digitally and reference materials are available online. When surveyed, our group lamented the lack of community programs and activities offered in Ventura libraries. Meeting facilities, an auditorium and possibly a coffee/juice bar would be great additions.

Our group has a big, lumpy piece of clay to mold. Citizen input will be very important. The entire community is being invited to weigh in. The idea is to have a strategic plan to present to the council by May of 2010.

Your constructive thoughts are welcomed in this space, or you can send me an email.

I SAW MY FIRST Ventura Council campaign sign today and it is only the first of August. This is annoying to me in the way that finding winter holiday decorations in department stores before Halloween always is. Venturans have traditionally been obsessive about placing signs in every square foot of public space around election cycles. But never have I seen anything go up this early.

By November I expect the visual pollution to be out of control with 16 council candidates and three ballot measures cluttering our political landscape. Early signage does not win votes at my house. If you excessively pollute my visual space, expect a thumbs down from me. Most studies show campaign signs don't have much effect on voters.

While I see a few familiar names in the mix and the four incumbents, of course, what always amazes me are the candidates who have not been active participants in city projects, committees, commissions, meetings and charettes. Our local government urgently needs volunteers, especially in these days of reduced staff due to budget cutbacks.

It's just the same handful of us traveling from event to event. In addition to the Cultural Affairs Commission, I've joined the Visitor's and Convention Bureau Board and recently agreed to serve on the Library Plan Steering Committee. This is in addition to the numerous other boards I sit on.

THE TRUTH IS, the city needs good volunteers a lot more than it needs 16 City Council candidates and while volunteering doesn't put your name in lights quite like running for office does, it is far more fulfilling.

Becoming a city volunteer is an excellent way to learn about how your local government works. In an era when cities everywhere are faced with tough decisions with myriad implications, I don't want somebody on the City Council who has to play catch-up. Governing a city is no small task and if you haven't read the General Plan, gone through the Capital Improvement Project Plan and can't explain the term "triple flip" or how SB 375 will impact the planning of civic projects in the future, you won't have my vote.

If you don't have the time to wade through inches-thick staff reports every week, answer 100 emails and dozens of phone calls daily, attend ribbon cuttings, mixers and endless outside meetings all for $600 a month, don't bother.

If you are interested in making an impact at the local level, consider volunteering first. You won't regret it.

JIM WUNDERMAN has saddled himself with quite a challenge: fixing a state that The Economist magazine called "ungovernable." Wunderman and his group Repair California want to rewrite a state constitution that has previously been amended 512 times into a bloated, contradictory mess.

California's governance process has followed a parallel evolution and now that the economy has tanked, all the nasty underpinnings are sticking out for the world to see. Ventura County Star Sacramento Bureau Chief Timm Herdt, a panelist at the Repair California event held Monday at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, said he has watched one too many deals made in the wee hours of all-night budget sessions in the legislature: "Now they only have one trick in their book and that's sleep deprivation."

A Bay area businessman, Wunderman says he has been joined in his efforts by a cross section of political groups like Common Cause, The New America Foundation, The Courage Campaign, Orange County Lincoln Club and Joint Venture - Silicon Valley Networks. Others are coming on board.

With so much contributing to the state's dysfunction, agreeing on what to fix may take some doing. For example, the Commission on the 21st Century Economy is currently locked in a partisan battle on tax reform. But Wunderman outlined the following possible issues for a state constitutional convention:

• Eliminating the 2/3 requirement to pass a budget (but not necessarily the 2/3 to pass a tax increase.) California is the only state to require a 2/3 vote for both.
  
• Revising the fiscal inequities which exist between Sacramento and local governments because of Prop. 13. "They didn't exactly intend for what's happened to happen," Wunderman said of the drain on funds for cities and counties.
• Election reform. "It's a special-interest controlled mob up in Sacramento right now. ... The short terms in the Assembly have given it rookie-league status so they operate at the behest of special interests and staff, the only ones who have experience."
• Reforming the ballot initiative process. "It wasn't intended to become what it's become. It's been taken over by special interests." Initiatives of the future could have sunset clauses and a requirement to reveal economic impact.
• Requiring performance measures for established programs.
  

THE CURRENT SYSTEM SPECIFIES that the legislature must call for a Constitutional Convention. But Repair California wants to bypass them and go directly to the voters with it. Once the Attorney General's Office issues titles and summaries for a proposed ballot measure, the group has only 150 days to gather 800,000 signatures to qualify it for the November 2010 ballot. The convention would take place in 2011 and the delegates' reform package would be voted on in November of 2012. 

How would the citizen-delegates be chosen? Herb Gooch, a political science professor at CLU, told me he thought they should be selected by Assembly district with all potential candidates voted on by the public.

While seasoned Sacramento hands like Herdt believe special-interest lawsuits will torpedo these efforts, the folks behind Repair California remain optimistic. If the packed room on Monday was any indication, the will is there.

"The people have the power to change this and nothing can stop them," Wunderman said.

THERE'S AN EXPRESSION called "Hawaiian Time" which loosely means you get around to it when you can. It's the laid-back attitude of the island of Kauai which I just spent the last nine days visiting. So in the aloha spirit, please forgive my week-late commentary on last week's state budget vote. Also in the Kauai spirit, I dedicate this blog to the island's unofficial birds: the wild chickens that roam loose everywhere on the island.

My fellow Democrats in the state legislature: with some notable exceptions, you generally lack spinal columns. How is it possible that the majority party with all public polling on its side kowtowed to the minority Republicans and our governor in slashing billions to schools, children's health insurance, state parks, the elderly, sick and disabled?

Why, when recent polling showed that over 70 percent of voters, across party lines, supported a cigarette and tobacco tax increase that could generate $1.2 billion a year, did you discard the idea? (We are number 32 in the nation in such fees. Forty-six other states have raised their cigarette tax rate a collective total of 93 times since California last raised its tax in 1998.)

Why, when other polling showed that 73 percent supported oil extraction fees like every other oil-drilling state has, did you also discount that plan? These fees could generate $1.3 billion a year.

Big Tobacco and Big Oil have spent millions fighting these ideas and you let them win.

Why did you instead agree to let the state borrow or take billions away from our cities and counties, leaving local governments to further cut their own decimated budgets? The City of Ventura alone will lose an estimated $2.76 million this fiscal year to Sacramento's budget debacle, according to a calculation tool provided by the Sacramento Bee. These grabs are sure to trigger lawsuits.

Another tip: Our unions want to save jobs, too. Bring everyone to the table to talk and don't let wedge issues like public employee pension reform be used as last-minute ammo by our governor in the next budget talks.

AND NOW FOR THE EXCEPTIONS:  Kudos to State Sen. Fran Pavley, (D-Agoura Hills) who refused to vote for the raid on local gas taxes which would cut street repairs to cities, according to Star reporter Timm Herdt. The Assembly fought that one back, too. Pavley also voted no on over $334 million in reductions in state spending for developmental services.

More no votes from Democratic Senators Gil Cedillo, Lou Correa, Mark DeSaulnier, and Leland Yee on the main budget bill forced perennial Republican no voters Sam Aanestad, Roy Ashburn, Dennis Hollingsworth, Bob Huff, George Runner, and Tony Strickland into voting yes. This time around they won't be able to issue hypocritical press releases afterward saying they didn't actually vote for these cuts.

And hooray for our local Assembly member Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) who stood up to the governor's sneaky plan to override the State Lands Commission's denial of the first new offshore drilling deal in state waters in 40 years. Irregardless of what you believe about oil drilling, bypassing long-established procedures and public decisions in a hurried budget deal is wrong.

"I think it should be very troubling to the public that a decision that was made through a public process in the light of day can be overturned by a few leaders behind closed doors," Victoria Rome, deputy California advocacy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council said. Nava, who is running for State Attorney General, gathered the support of more than 60 environmental groups, editorial writers and the state Democratic Party in defeating the oil deal.

These Democrats with guts will continue to have my vote.