On fiscal reform, Jerry Brown should listen to Jerry Brown.

Some years ago, when the English pop singer Morrissey was preparing to revive his musical career, a reporter asked the famously lank man if he was still thin. “In a crowd, yes,” he answered, “a crowd of very heavy people.” Governor Jerry Brown, another 1980s revival act, is developing a reputation for fiscal uprightness, and the man does indeed stand tall — in a crowd of Californians.

Though he is a son of San Francisco, Governor Brown has always had a talent for annoying the bits of the state between Carmel and Clearlake: The Dead Kennedys denounced him as a “Zen fascist” way back in 1979’s “California Über Alles.” And the trans-Brownian Left is once again annoyed with the governor, who, in a fit of genuine fiscal conservatism during what has been a largely phony budget-reform campaign, has found some money that he does not wish to spend.

Specifically, Governor Brown has suggested a reform measure that would level out capital-gains receipts, which are a very large source of revenue for the state. Capital-gains revenues are volatile everywhere, but especially so in California, where everything from Silicon Valley IPOs to a goofy real-estate market makes capital gains a feast-or-famine proposition. In 2006, when the first of the Google insiders began cashing out their shares following the company’s initial public offering, California’s 9.3 percent capital-gains tax produced almost $10 billion in revenue — but it produced only $3 billion just a few years later.

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