Caroline Bruister explains why California matters: its economy and population make it a global force, yet local government shapes daily life more than most people realize. She highlights Estonia's digital government as a model and notes that youth voter turnout is dangerously low, creating room for civic innovation.
Chapters
So a couple fun facts, as you probably could tell. And I know that we do have some California residents. So can I get my Californians? Awesome. Great. Can you tell me what city and county you are from in California or resided most recently? San Francisco, California. San Francisco. San Francisco, which is a fun fact. It's the one-city county in the state of California. San Mateo County, I think. Awesome. Where we are today, we are all in San Mateo. I go between Alameda and San Jose. Awesome. I'm from LA. LA. The largest county in California and the largest county in the US. All my Californians? Okay. Los Angeles too. Not surprising since it's so big, right? Okay. So California is not only large in terms of population. It's bigger than both Australia and Canada, actually, but it is also very, very large in terms of economy. So we actually— and the 8th isn't the 8th largest in terms of states. That's compared to other nations. So what happens in California actually really matters on a global level. We are a minority-majority state. And what that means is there's not one racial group that makes up the majority. And so, as they like to say, kind of in politics, especially in California, as goes California, goes the nation. So we are kind of this really diverse, kind of left coast thinker that tends to be where ideas come to be tried and then trickle across the rest of the US. For example, environmental laws tend to happen here first. Maybe you're familiar with things like the plastic bag bans that really started on the city level in California that now the state has considered, and now that's kind of other states in the US are looking at that. Gay marriage is another example of that. Something that started on the local level in California, and then we became an influencer actually across the nation. And Okay, I'm gonna ask a question. I don't have any candy in my pockets, but does anyone know, does anyone happen to know, or within 2 million, how many people do you think live in the state of California? One hand raised quickly. 38 million. Bing! 38.8. So it's, there's a lot of people here. Excellent. I didn't even see him use his phone. That was amazing. Impressive. So the reason that I'm talking about how big it is, I want to implore how important actually the local levels are. And that's why I asked all the Californians what counties they're from. Because we hear there's a lot of— there's a lot going on in the media right now, especially because there's a presidential election going on, which you may have heard about. But you don't hear a lot about the 58 counties that all have 5 supervisor members that represent them. So let's dive into that for a second. So we have 2 residents from LA County here. There's about 11 million folks, right, in LA. Alpine County is one of the other 58 counties in California, and there's about just over 1,000 residents. So they have the same level of— they have the same number of representatives. Regardless of how many citizens. So if I'm an Alpine County supervisor, I could represent about, you know, 200 or so citizens. If I'm an LA County supervisor, I represent several million. So that's a huge imbalance, right, in how representation exists, and we'll get into the numbers in a minute, but I think it really reflects in our amount of voter participation and turnout, unfortunately. Some people mentioned what city or town they're from. That's another local level of government that we have here in the US and specifically in California. Right now we're in the city of San Mateo and also in the county of San Mateo. An example of a local issue that, you know, may be important or not to you, the city council of San Mateo this week was considering whether there should be a freeze on rental market— rental increases. Obviously, as you now are all residents of San Mateo, you know there's a lot of people who want to be living and working here. There's a lot of great opportunity. What that means is that it has impacted the housing market tremendously. And actually, at the city level is where a lot of those decisions are made about encouraging more growth, encouraging construction to come in. So it's just another example of why it really matters who your mayor is. Or who your school board member is, because that's another— you know, education is obviously a big issue, and those decisions are made on the local level as well. So I alluded to it, and I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but in the 2014 election, so non-presidential, only 8.2% of Californians aged 18 to 24 voted. Not great. Even worse, If you were between 18 and 19 in 2014, you were actually more likely to be arrested than to have voted in the election. So we have some work to do. And I won't make everyone raise their hand to say if they're registered in wherever they're eligible to be registered. But I think— and I think that there's many reasons that this exists. And we could probably— I would love to spend hours talking to you about it. But, you know, we've kind of gone through the levels of government, and I think that, you know, there's a definite disconnect, and some would say mistrust of what government is actually doing, and I think a lot of confusion about, okay, so it's the city that's gonna control whether my rent's gonna go up, you know, so why does it matter who the president is? You know, there's a lot of good questions, and we could do a better job on education of those issues. So now for the good news. You guys are all here. And I started off by saying how excited I am to be in front of a group of innovators and entrepreneurs who have literally come from all over the globe and all over the state and the US to come and think about ways that they can create new things. And I think that government and the civic and GovTech industries is a great way to apply those skills. I'm going to talk a little bit more about Innovate Your State, which is a nonprofit that Tim Draper actually founded to encourage public participation and government outcomes. But I want to take a minute and talk about some of the bigger changes that actually some governments— I don't think we have any Estonian students here this time, but it's an example of a government that's really trying to innovate from the government level. So they've been able to institute a lot of digital filings. That's actually been a tremendous cost savings as well as just really improved citizen-customer interface. So there's examples of governments that are doing good things, and then we also have examples of businesses and nonprofits that are helping to drive government innovation.
