Even in Matters of Bad Basketball, Sacramento Won't Devolve Power

California's governing system is broken in part because it's centralized, but Sacramento doesn't want to devolve power.

As it happens, Sacramento professional basketball team, the Kings, is also a disaster on and off the field, but Sacramento won't let it go either.

Leading Sacramento citizens announced they are seeking to qualify a local referendum in the city of Anaheim -- 400 miles to the capital's south -- to block a bond package that the city council passed to bring the Kings there.

This is not as strange as it may sound, but it is very California. Local initiative and referendum have often taken stadiums and the movement of sports teams as their subjects. And economic warfare between cities has often produced local ballot measure wars. What's puzzling is why anyone would want the Sacramento Kings, who have never made the National Basketball Association finals and have lost 30 more games than they've won this season.

Sacramento would seem to be better off without the Kings. And Anaheim already has two pro basketball teams in its TV market (OK, one pro team, the Lakers, and a hard-to-describe entity called the Los Angeles Clippers). Can't we all agree that the Sacramento Kings is one business that should move out of state?

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