"Officialdom": California state government, 1849-1879

California History, Wntr, 2003 by Judson A. Grenier

With this cast of characters in place, we can examine the highlights of the first three decades of state government.

The first legislature ranks as the most creative and probably the most competent. It included many members of the constitutional convention and was faced with the daunting challenge of creating a new government. In a few months' time, legislators had to develop statute law, civil and criminal; establish courts to administer justice; set up county governments to serve as the local arm of the state; design procedures for selling public land, building roads, and draining swamps; stimulate and regulate economic growth; devise mechanisms for dealing with the federal government and other states; construct prisons and hospitals; introduce a public school system; provide mechanisms for incorporating cities and towns; and find the money to pay for it all. Revenue measures chiefly were drafted by the Senate Committee on Finance, headed by Thomas Green, and included taxes of 50 cents on each $100 worth of taxable property, a poll tax of $5 on every male inhabitant between twenty-one and fifty years of age (unless otherw ise exempted), and a foreign miners' fee of $20 per month. The last, reflecting racial tensions in the mining regions that were home to many of the legislators, was aimed principally at curtailing the competition of Hispanics. Widely ignored, it proved to be a money-raising failure. Other bills authorized the state treasurer to issue $300,000 worth of bonds, bearing interest of 3 percent per month, and appropriated $750,000 from the general fund to pay state expenses. These measures created a financial straitjacket that crippled the government's ability to function when income failed to match expectations. Everyone involved in the birth of state government--legislature, executive officers, even the former military governor and secretary of state--believed that the federal government would come to the aid of California (as it had other territories and states) by remitting to it those monies collected by customs officers at local ports of entry in 1848-49, the so-called "civil fund." But in spite of almost cont inual correspondence with Washington and the later efforts of California's congressional delegation, no such money ever was provided. It was a grave handicap for the fledgling state. (5)

Regarding government structure, the first legislature passed measures establishing twenty-five original counties, standardizing the officials required for each (judge, clerk, attorney, surveyor, sheriff, recorder, assessor, coroner, treasurer), providing for the incorporation of cities and for the appointment of harbor pilots in San Francisco and port wardens at every California port of entry, and establishing marine hospitals. Sweeping away the old Spanish-Mexican judicial system, the legislature created a state Supreme Court, district courts, and courts of session in every county. It failed to select a permanent site for the state capital but set up a mechanism to tabulate voter-preference sentiment in a subsequent election. (6)