The California Legislature has passed the latest state budget and we are ready to enter the summer vacation. Our $310 billion plan reflects our values, getting homeless people off the streets, supporting schools, keeping public transportation running and spending to treat mental illness. As a state Senate Democrat-majority, I voted for all of this.

But as many Californians know, we’ve already spent billions of dollars on the same problem, with little to prove it.

Our failure is proof that good intentions and large sums of money alone are not enough to solve the problems plaguing the Golden State. For our progressive beliefs to be meaningful, Congress must ensure that the money we spend is actually improving the lives of those we pledge to help. not.

We can do that in two ways that will profoundly change the way we work. First, we must stop interfering with and failing programs and services with special profit demands. Second, we need to collect and evaluate data on how our program is performing. This includes supporting independent watchdogs that let us know when governments are wasting money and failing to do their jobs.

Consider our commitment to affordable housing, which is a hot topic. Five years ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected a proposal to make it harder to use the courts to slow and ultimately block the supply of new affordable housing. Not a single Democrat voted for the bill. A year later, a similar bill passed the Senate, but was defeated by Congress.

Finally, in 2021, The idea won overwhelming support from the Democratic Party.. What has changed? Even though state law already required union-level wages to be paid on such projects, the bill was amended to only use “skilled and trained” workers on affordable projects. (rules for union members). The provision would make housing construction more expensive and difficult, putting the interests of construction unions ahead of the needs of the homeless and low-income.

Efforts to help California’s homeless residents are similarly hampered. The proposal to seek treatment for mentally ill people who live on the streets and are too ill to care for themselves is a civil rights claim that people are inherently homeless and have the right to live without treatment. It has been repeatedly blocked by groups.

Or consider public schools. Democrats know that hundreds of schools are bankrupt and too many children cannot read, write and do math at the grade level. And we know that these struggling students are disproportionately low-income children of color. But the issue has received little attention from Democrats on the Capitol, who have made no recent effort to figure out why schools are in short supply and what can be done to improve it. do not have.

Legislation that would make bureaucrats more accountable would also be difficult in Sacramento. Congress wants to bail out the Bay Area Rapid Transit System by raising the tolls on the bridge. But for the last two years, Democrats blocked the proposal This is to give the BART Inspector General the independence to hold them accountable for how the funds held by the BART system are spent.

And while we spend more than $6 billion a year on mental health services, states have little information about which programs are working and which aren’t. But the Newsom administration has quietly opposed legislation to collect data and measure results. Bills to do so were introduced in 2021 and 2022, but failed to move forward.

There is a glimmer of hope for a more effective approach. Bill by State Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) and Rep. Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland)For example, it will promote affordable housing without bowing to unions, and it seems likely that it will pass. Sen. Susan Thalamantes Eggman The (Stockton Democrat) is once again pushing a bill that would allow for real interventions to help people with mental illness and addictions get off the streets, and this time it might actually pass.

Meanwhile, the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee has approved an independent performance audit of the state’s long-controversial wage-theft enforcement program and its disastrous performance on homelessness. We can only hope that these investigations will lead to meaningful change.

But that’s just the beginning. If California progressives are serious about building a government and society that is a caring and sustainable model of a nation, not one that warns of failed hopes and promises, then we should be more principled. leadership is needed.

Steve Glazer is a Democratic state senator representing the Bay Area’s 7th Senate District, which includes most of Contra Costa County and parts of Alameda County.