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Interview with John Laird

Part one of a two-part series

John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, says he had a successful year in Sacramento, with more bills signed by the governor than all but one other member of the House. Lucjan Szewczyk/ Press-Banner

Editor’s note: Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, whose 27th District encompasses Scotts Valley,  San Lorenzo Valley, Bonny Doon and Pasatiempo, spoke with the Press-Banner editorial board recently. In a wide-ranging interview, he covered the recently completed legislative session, budget differences with the governor and his own future. Edited slightly, here are his answers to questions posed by editor Chuck Anderson and reporter Peter Burke, presented as a narrative on various topics.

What’s your take on the legislative session that just ended?

“I had a really good year. I introduced 22 bills, put 17 on the governor’s desk and he signed 15. He signed more of my bills than any Assembly member. Except for one senator, it was more than any single legislator. Topics were wide ranging — we took on some big things.

“My children’s health bill is not one of them. It’s passed, though, and it’s sitting on the Assembly desk. The governor sent his staff to say, “We’re going to call you back into a special session on health care.”

“We wanted to keep this going and not be at odds on children’s health care, so I performed a unique parliamentary maneuver — I had it passed by both houses of the legislature, then in the waning moments of the session just had it held at the desk. It was our way to get it all done, but respect his desire to work with it in the special session. When we come back to this, it just sails down to him.

“I was the point person for the Democrats in the Assembly in the special session on water issues and I’m kind of disappointed that we’re not anywhere yet, but at the same time it was such a big topic that trying to do it in two weeks was something that probably wasn’t going to happen.

“The key is whether people are willing to move, to compromise on the issue. I was very careful, as hard as it was, to keep my caucus from taking any firm positions. So while we have principles, we weren’t drawing lines in the sand because we felt that we needed to be able to move with the others and get to a deal.”  

Some of the others didn’t do that, and they were having a tough time trying to figure out how to back off. I got off one good line: “I come from a beach town; lines in the sand are erased every hour.”

The water issue is very complex because of the Delta and who pays for it. One of the interesting things is that I kept using Santa Cruz County as an example. The governor’s proposal was to put $5 billion into three dams — we would be paying for them here and not benefit in any way, because we don’t import water in our county, nor does Monterey.

This year the governor’s people did not want to give an immediate cost-of-living increase to people on Social Security because they said we don’t have the money. Yet the same people were going to obligate us $650 million a year from the general fund for something that wouldn’t benefit the county.

So I would have to say to certain people: “Jeez, you’re not getting your Social Security increase so you can pay for water that doesn’t benefit you. I was arguing that it was a matter of equity and that they had to have some regional money in there as part of any final deal.

Even though I was the point person for the entire Assembly Democratic caucus, I always had to keep the home district in mind so it was treated fairly.

Term limits

I think the battle’s been joined on Proposition 93. I think it still has a good shot, but when you see the prison guards’ union switch its position to try to leverage its own interest, that’s the problem.

We have to be careful not to do anything we weren’t going to do anyway. In my view, I’d like it to pass because I think it’s a tweak that makes our system work better. If the price of it not passing is holding out and not allowing ourselves to be leveraged on things that may not be in the best interest of the state, then it’s not a price we’re going to pay.

The other interesting thing is that the opposition hasn’t increased. It’s always hovered at exactly the same number. It’s been at 30 or 31 percent. The proposition is still polling at about 50 percent “yes.”  It’s going to be a battle, but . . . .

Light brown apple moth spraying

I’ve met with the secretary of agriculture I think five times now. I initially wrote a very long letter that compiled the concerns that have been raised by people here. I tried to get the secretary to address the concerns in a way that people could feel like they were being heard.

At this point, it’s going to take some third-party peer scientific review to make some statements to calm the public, if that’s the appropriate direction. I have been asking for that to happen in a way that people can examine what’s really going on.

They need to stand back and figure out how to address this. How are they going to deal with a third-party review of the science that gets people to listen and feel like their concerns are being addressed?

The secretary has thought his role is just to look straight ahead. Having been in local government as an elected official for 17 years, I know you have to go through the process first and make the decision second.

I think what inflamed people is that they said we’re going to spray and then in a little while we’ll get to the public process. It sent a signal that people weren’t having input, so it was backwards.

My role has been to try to synthesize these concerns and try to get the Department of Agriculture to address them in a way that people feel they’re being heard. My Web site contains a wide-ranging treatment of this issue.
 
Controversy over his needle-exchange bill

Far be it from me to index my bills on the level of controversy (laughs). There was some controversy on some of the others, although that’s an interesting point.

Where there in the past has been a considerable amount of opposition, by the time the bill went to the governor’s desk, there was almost none, except from the narcotics officers. And even they even stopped coming to the hearings and opposing it.

I feel that I did a lot of good work with the different interest groups. A telling thing happened:

After the session, I was on a shuttle to the airport with four other people. It turns out all four are going to a national conference in Palm Springs. The guy in front of me says he works in a needle-exchange program in Brooklyn. Not having a clue who I am – just that I’m from here, he says: Oh, man, that needle-exchange bill  you guys did out here is big – it is really big. We’re trying to model it for other states.

The great thing is it was vetoed once, then last year the governor said hold the bill so he could work with us to a signature. Now it’s finally in the statutes that you can buy the syringes from the grants the state gives.

These grassroots programs are out there trying to stop the spread of HIV, and they had to fundraise on top of it because they couldn’t buy the syringes out of the grant. This will allow them to focus on their work.

When someone has to bring in a needle to get a clean one, three things happen:

The obvious thing is that you’re preventing the spread of blood borne pathogens. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for a case of HIV to someone who doesn’t have his own means.

The second thing is that the old syringes become a premium, so they aren’t around playgrounds, streets and other public places. The third thing is that it’s the No. 1 route for people to move into drug treatment.

So I became persuaded that, as controversial as this was, it’s the right thing to do.When you can engage in a reasonable discussion over a number of years, the opposition moves away.

The governor’s budget cuts

One fact: if his water bond had been passed, it would have cost us out of the general fund $650 million a year for 20 years. He cut $700 million from the budget, so he was willing to spend it all right back. An interesting thing about the water bill is that historically 96 percent of the California Water Project was paid for by the users and 4 percent by the state. That’s why I was saying all along that it’s not an issue of building the dams, it’s an issue of who pays, because it’s changing the historical balance.

When you look at the things he cut, he made some horrific cuts. The outreach for children’s health care – that’s awful because there’s a significant number of people who are eligible to be covered by the children’s health and just don’t sign up.

The only way to have universal access is to have universal access. A lot of people don’t sign up for various reasons. If you don’t have universal access, in the meantime you must have outreach to lift that number.

He worked with us one year before to beef up the outreach and then he cut it. He wanted to get to $700 million in cuts, so he also cut the homeless mentally ill grant program – $55 million – and for Santa Cruz County that’s a big deal.

Different cuts were made and it’s one of those things that we will see the impact of over time. Then we head into next year, where the $4 billion reserve that we put in this year’s budget has dropped to a $2 billion deficit. Five hundred million was borrowed from the State Teachers Retirement Fund and a court ordered it back, the governor wants to sell the scholarship fund for $1 billion and that’s delayed, people created referenda for new Indian gaming compacts to go on the ballot and they can’t go into effect and there was supposed to be some money received from them in the budget.

Revenue is down by about $2 billion by June 30. Put all these things together and it flips the budget. When you have a general fund that’s $104 billion, that’s huge.

When between two-thirds and 80 percent of the budget is guaranteed, it means that if you’re going to make cuts, you get blood on the walls. It has taken a huge chunk out of UC and CSU and out of health care and services for seniors.

I just don’t think the cuts are there to be done without eliminating state support for higher education. So we’re going to have a six-month conversation.

When we had a similar deficit three years ago, we took the budget hearings on the road and went all across the state. It’s really early, but I’m beginning to think we’re going to have to do something like that because you can’t spring whatever you’re going to spring on the public . . . the public has to buy into whatever we’re going to do. However it happens, we have to make sure the public is involved in these decisions.

The governor’s cuts in public transportation funding

That was a tragedy. The state receives money from the gas tax. When gas prices go up and there’s more than is needed for roads, public transit gets the overage. This year it was a record $1.3 billion, and the governor proposed sweeping all of it away.

In the budget we passed out of the Legislature, we had protected $750 million for transit and let the rest go to the general fund. The key thing is that most of it was for capital acquisition, not operations. Santa Cruz Metro’s purchase of buses is at risk from those cuts.

In the final negotiations with the Assembly, the $750 million got lowered to $160 million. It’s just a disaster. When gas prices go way up, that’s when people rely on public transit. 

His plans if Proposition 93 fails and he is termed out

I’m not totally sure. I feel I’m at the top of my game. Being in the Assembly for six years and being budget chair for four years and to be so successful with bills – I never would have predicted that would happen.

I think things will just work out if it doesn’t pass. My Mom is the one who’s worried about it.