More money won’t fix a broken government any more than more revenue fixes dying companies.
IMHO one of the roots of all evil was proposition 13, which created a kind of property owners caste with a vested interest in actually making the housing problem worse. From that flows the homeless crisis, as housing costs start at upper middle class income levels anywhere in the state that also has jobs.
The problem is that proposition 13 is a hole from which it would be really hard to dig the state out from. Any politician who challenges it is voted out instantly by the landed caste as well as by the financially vulnerable younger folks who over-leveraged themselves into unaffordable homes and would be ruined if housing fell.
The infrastructure problem is also partly related to the housing problem. Nobody dares change anything because it might pop the housing bubble.
Prop 13 was a Republican thing, which shows that this isn’t just a Democrat or “too much liberalism” problem. It’s deeper than that.
I highly doubt it's that rather than the fact special interest are prioritized over 'effective government' in large parts due to some conservatives and neoliberals promoting the idea of corruption == freedom. When there's a thousand ways to legally bribe politicians, of course there's no incentive for effective government.