So it become plausible to wonder whether the reason the state does not build new roads and school classroom is a shortage of money, or because our state government has become very expensive and does not do the kind of things with the budget that it used to do, such as building roads and schools, or providing aid for local governments to do these things. Twenty-five years ago, for instance, the state government spent nearly 16 percent of the budget on transportation. Today California spends less than 6 percent, and ranks last in the nation in transportation spending per capita. Moreover, that 16 percent we used to spend was largely for new road construction. Today the majority of our transportation money is simply for maintenance.
Education is the other point of contention in state government.
But again, Proposition 13 and the Gann spending limit are not the real culprits. Education received massive funding increases under Governor Deukmejian. The mystery over the seeming shortage of funds for education disappears when you examine the high administrative costs for many of the state's 40 categorical educational programs, or when you find that California has one of the highest ratios of school administrators to classroom teachers in the nation. In other words, the passage of Proposition 13 did not really derail the liberal bureaucracy in Sacramento, as the rise in spending for welfare and education continued unabated. But the decline in spending for roads and other basic infrastructure services, already declining under Governor Jerry Brown, accelerated after Proposition 13.