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Jun 14, 2023

Why Feinstein is the perfect senator for do

Sen. Dianne Feinstein attends a Senate Judiciary Business Meeting at the Dirksen

Sen. Dianne Feinstein attends a Senate Judiciary Business Meeting at the Dirksen Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 18.

Dianne Feinstein is, in many ways, the perfect senator for California.

At first glance, this seems paradoxical. Feinstein was recently absent from the Senate for months, recovering from shingles at home. And even before her illness, sources reported that she was often confused about basic tasks, did not recognize people and introduced herself as "Mayor Feinstein" (she was last mayor of San Francisco in 1988, to be clear). In recent weeks, journalists on Capitol Hill have laid bare just how much Feinstein's faculties have declined. Perhaps most shocking is that after returning, Feinstein doesn't seem to remember her absence. She insists that she's been in Washington the whole time, voting on bills and nominees.

Many observers have called on Feinstein to resign, contending that she is failing California because she can't do the basic functions of her job. But Feinstein's continued presence in the Senate — despite her inability to advocate for her constituents’ views — is perfectly consistent with California's do-nothing political culture, which values the status quo over any kind of positive change.

The state, at every level, has built a legal framework that prioritizes the old over the new — even when change is needed. In California, whenever a developer wants to tear down an existing structure, state environmental law requires the locality to analyze the building for "historic" value. In San Francisco, for instance, when a developer wanted to turn an abandoned movie theater into apartments, this state-mandated review led to the city recognizing the theater as a potential landmark. As a result, the developer delayed construction so it could jump through additional bureaucratic hoops and even considered drastically reducing the number of apartments in the project.

Or what about San Francisco's Castro Theatre? Another Planet Entertainment, a local production company, took over its management after the cinema was closed for most of the pandemic. It wanted to renovate the theater's seating and turn it into a music venue. But San Francisco got to work making sure that would never happen — despite concerns that without the changes, the theater may close for good. In the view of some city leaders, it was unacceptable that the renovations might irreparably alter the venue's character as a traditional movie theater and LGBT community venue. Yet, even after Another Planet promised to dedicate a certain percentage of its programming to LGBT content, some city supervisors still scoffed at anything besides the status quo. Apparently, the city is OK shunning change even if it might mean losing the theater forever.

Even when government doesn't directly intervene, the state lets private parties enforce the status quo. In Santa Cruz, housing costs are so high that many of the city's college students aren't just struggling to pay rent — they’re homeless. But for years, California watched as current residents blocked new dorms and apartments. Finally, in 2022, the state passed a law streamlining the approval process for some student housing. But even under this new law, projects still need to meet seven separate environmental, labor and planning requirements before they can qualify for expedited approval. And when Gov. Gavin Newsom recently unveiled a package to reform the state's environmental review laws, he left out housing altogether. The state's small steps in the right direction don't match the urgency of the status quo. Many college students still live out of their cars, in part because current residents fight tooth and nail to preserve any existing structure (or existing empty lot).

And when the government does act, the results often reveal just how paralyzed California has become. In Los Angeles, the city wanted to add covered structures that provided light and shade at bus stops. But a covered bus stop needed time-consuming permits spread across eight agencies. Instead of recognizing the absurdity of that fact and changing the permitting process, the city piloted a program that installed a small piece of metal on a pole that provided neither light nor shade. The city didn't realize how embarrassingly lethargic its project looked until pictures of the pole went viral online.

And California's do-nothing culture has dire consequences. California faces a housing and migration crisis so bad that, if current trends hold, the state would be on pace to lose five congressional districts in 2030. All while California has both a cutting-edge tech industry and a rapidly rising economic output. Almost always, a region with these types of advantages sees rapid population growth, not decline, as migrants seeking economic opportunity flood the area.

Despite this, the state has continued to embrace its do-nothing political culture. The state's land-use reforms have been piecemeal and slow. When wealthy cities organized resistance to the reforms, the state largely failed to step in, instead asking developers to win difficult lawsuits. Large swaths of the state continue to be zoned solely for low-density development, with restrictive height minimums, setbacks and lot size requirements.

Feinstein's refusal to resign is just another episode in California's long history of refusing to change, even when it desperately needs to. Yes, her mental capacities have decayed to the point where she can't do the job of a senator. But, in a sense, she's representing California better than anyone else could. By refusing to resign, even in the face of problems she is ill-equipped to tackle, Feinstein perfectly embodies California's do-nothing political culture. Until the state changes, Feinstein will remain the senator the state deserves.

Kraz Greinetz is a sixth-generation San Franciscan and a third-year law student at Duke University, where he serves as articles editor for the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy.