Poll shows Californians support rural investments

Maggie Angst reports today for the Sacramento Bee today under the headline, "Free mental health care, invest in rural areas. Here’s the future California wants, says poll."  Here's an excerpt: 

A new poll released Friday by Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab lays out a vision for the direction Californians are hoping to see the state take in the years and decades ahead.

The poll, conducted in collaboration with the California 100 Initiative and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, brought more than 700 people together for a weekend in February to weigh 56 diverse policy proposals in the realms of housing, energy, health care and education. 

Participants were polled at the start of the weekend and then again at the end, after multiple small group discussions and panels with experts. In many instances, the deliberation led participants to adjust their thinking.

* * * 

In broad strokes, the poll results demonstrated that Californians are yearning for more transparency and want the government to work more effectively for its residents and businesses, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, executive director of California 100.

“Do these findings spell hope or doom for California’s future? I’d say it’s a qualified hope,” Ramakrishnan said. “The kind of solutions people are pushing are pragmatic and aspirational — and some are also quite bold.”

Among the 10 most supported proposals, the fourth most popular related to rural California specifically and implicated spatial inequality: 

4. California should invest in rural areas to ensure that they have adequate funding for infrastructure, such as roads and digital broadband. (70.8% to 73.7%)

I must say that I find this concern for rural California quite heartening. I'm guessing a majority of those polled--perhaps a vast majority--are metropolitan, making this prioritization of rural needs especially heartening.  It shows that even urban folks want their rural counterparts to have core services like broadband and roads.  

And because I know readers will want to know and may not be able to get behind the Bee's paywall to see, the most supported proposal of all was:

1. California should strengthen its high school civics requirement to include experiences with participation, discussion, negotiation, and compromise in a democracy. (68.9% to 80.4%)