An unfiltered interview with Assemblymember Saldaña

This story was reported for San Diego News Network on October 5, 2009.

She’s chair of the only bipartisan caucus in Sacramento – a caucus made up of women lawmakers. Through her work on the caucus, her passion for assisting women is evident.

She gets heated though when you talk about the state budget cuts to health care.

And she gets even more heated and even more passionate when you talk about San Diego County’s board of supervisors — which may explain why she just stepped into the ring to be the next supervisor of District 4.

When Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-San Diego) announced her candidacy for the San Diego County seat on July 29, it was a shocker to many but I wasn’t too surprised. It doesn’t mean I was any less intrigued though: A state legislator, obviously progressive, challenging a Republican leader, who’s held the seat for 15 years? The entire county board is made up of conservatives who have long ties with San Diego.

I was fascinated by Supervisor Ron Roberts’ new challenge.

I requested an in-person, unfiltered interview with Saldaña to not only discuss her run but the state’s major budget quandary, issues affecting American women and other topics. We would meet at a bustling Little Italy coffeehouse, down the street from her office. After an hour-long conversation and more than 20 questions tossed at her…. It became clear where Saldaña stood on different matters.

I started the interview though, with the question I think most important:

Question: Why did you get into politics?

I believe that everybody has a contribution to make, that each of us can make a difference in the government that we are living with. I’ve tried for many years to do that as a volunteer, activist, educator. I’ve finally decided I needed to make an impact from within government so I decided to run for office.

Q: What did you have to change in your personal life when you stepped into the political scene?

Being less of an activist and promoting change on the outside, and now realizing there are handles within government and issues you need to understand to change for the better — whether you need to change inflation, regulation, appointments. It’s not only getting to know the players but the roles of how that game is played inside the government. I think also being solution-oriented. When you’re on the outside and you’re protesting something, you can just say “no” but not bring alternatives. When you’re in a decision-making position, you have to bring up other solutions and say, “Here are the alternatives,” and that’s a different orientation than a lot of activists have.

Q: Would you say your biggest challenge as an elected official is getting supporters for your bills?

I’ve never had a lack of supporters. I’ve had people come in because they know I’m effective at getting bills to pass and getting them to be signed by the governor. I’ve worked on non-partisan bills, I’ve worked with Republicans on some issues that they are concerned about. I’m chair of the Women’s Caucus, it’s the only caucus that’s bipartisan in the legislature and it’s the largest caucus. So, I look for legislation that is non-partisan on health care, on care giving, on military families. Those are things that should never be partisan issues, those are things that are just a part of everyday life.

Q: I interviewed the Santee Mayor [Randy Voepel] and we talked about the California budget and lawmakers, etc. And he said to me, “Sometimes, I feel like they’re just competing to see how many bills they could pass.” What are your thoughts on his comment?

I set a cap, a very strict cap, on the number of bills I bring forward. I don’t believe it’s in the best interest to be too spread out on legislation. Other legislators take a different approach but I’d rather go for quality not quantity of bills. If you look at the bills I’ve managed to get through, it’s probably comparable to others. Every bill that goes forward costs money. I think the estimated cost is $20,000. So I’m very aware of that. When people come to me and say “Will you take this bill on our behalf?” I say, “Will it save the state money? Is it going to streamline government in some way? Will it result in some cost-savings if it does become law?”

Q: Why is it so important for you to work with different women’s organizations and that more women run for office?

We’re a little over 51 percent of the population. If you don’t have full political representation for any group, then the policies don’t reflect the priorities you have. Case in point: family medical leave. I know for many people if your child is home sick then the expectation is that one or both parents will stay home to take care of their sick child. And for years, actually up until 10 years ago, that was unpaid leave you were taking or the employer could say, “No I’m not going to give you time off.”

That’s tremendously difficult for us to be a pro-family culture to tell a mother or father who is working they can’t take time off to be with your sick child. It wasn’t until a woman senator, Shelia Kuehl, introduced the Family Medical Leave Act that people said this really should be something parents have in the case their child is sick.

Women’s voices, women’s experiences change the way policymakers look at the definition of the law and I think it’s for the better.

Q: When I first started covering California politics, I read many articles in the past about the governor and learned he really ran on a campaign about balancing the budget in a timely manner – it was Proposition 58. But now, experts are saying the real problem is the two-thirds majority vote, that Proposition 58 doesn’t really change anything because even with Proposition 58, budgets are still being passed late. What are your thoughts on that? When will things change?

We’re one of three states that have the super majority — Arkansas and Rhode Island have the super majority but they don’t have the same problem we have because their budgets are much smaller than ours. Arkansas’ budget is about $4 billion, Rhode Island’s about $6 or $7 billion, California’s at $80 to $100 billion – but in addition to being one of only three states with that two-thirds super majority requirement, we are the only state that gives the governor line-item veto power. So what you see is because of this crazy situation surrounding that requirement, all the policy issues that have nothing to do with the budget get thrown into the budget because the minority party recognizes this is the only chance we have to get something through. It rends up in a very tragic way sometimes.

Q: These budget problems bring up two issues. The first is when and if California will have a Constitutional Convention and second, it brings up the fact maybe Schwarzenegger ran on a false campaign with Proposition 58 and that maybe Californians didn’t understand the budget process or don’t understand the budget process…maybe we just said, “Oh, what he’s saying sounds good, maybe I should vote for that.” And that in turn, leads to a general issue about campaigns, politicians and how much we’re relying on them.

Well, let me just say this because you’re talking about his first campaign, the recall election. He ran on the vehicle license fee, the car tax. If you look at the value of the vehicle license fee that he took away, he campaigned, he blew up cars, he complained that we were gauging taxpayers, if you look at the value of that, over the years since he’s been in office — it would be very close to the deficit we’re facing now. He took away an estimated $6 to $9 billion a year over the last six years – you add that up and it would come up to $30 to $40 billion of revenue to the state, which is very close to what we have in the deficit that we’ve had to manage this year.

So the governor running as an anti-car tax proponent was extremely short-sighted and it takes a simple majority to take away funding but it takes a super majority to restore that funding. So every time we give a tax credit, every time we take away state funds we are creating an extra hurdle to restore that extra funding. That’s what the two-thirds (requirement) has done to California.

The Constitutional Convention – the question of us bringing in experts or people who have competing proposals on how to change the constitution: The thing is you’re not just dealing with the finances, you’re dealing with other types of social issues and that’s re-engineering the state in a massive way that a lot of people are concerned about taking on right now when have such an economic crisis. People are limiting spending. If we try to do a lot re-engineering during this situation we would wind up having what some people say, what Schwarzenegger and Republicans want anyway, not just smaller governments but frankly, very ineffective government. Then you start turning over to private corporations, private investments and privates sources that control over what should be public services. I think that would be very concerning to a lot of people.

Q: If economists say the recession won’t end until the final quarter of next year, what cuts should California expect next year?

We only control a small percentage of the budget, because so much of it is on auto-pilot. There are certain demands because of our ballot measures that we spend on prisons; the cost of prisons have gone from an estimated $2 billion to $10 billion a year in the last decade. I just bring that out because there really is very little of the budget that we control and what we do control is education, and that’s what’s already been cut with the promise of restoring that when the economy improves. Cuts to health services, and frankly there are counties like San Diego that need to do a better job in providing health care. At one point, San Diego county had to be sued and loss because they failed to provide health care to our poorest residents. If counties like San Diego don’t step up and aren’t willing to backfill some of the cost of health services, when they’re needed then people are going to see more difficult times.

One potential bright spot: California tends to go into recession earlier and come out of it a little earlier than other states. So I would hope, we started seeing this drop off last year before other states saw it, that we’ll maybe see our revenues go up.

Q: Let’s talk about the County race now. How did you get the idea of running for County office?

It has evolved over time. I’ve talked to people who receive county services or don’t get county services. And they would come to me and ask if I could get help for them from other resources. So I would do what I could then I realized other counties were providing these services. And I thought, “Wait a minute. Why do people have to come to me, a state legislator, to get help on health care issues? To get help on food stamp issues? When that’s a county responsibility?”

I thought this is not cost-effective, this is not good government – this is not running a business. This is about setting yourself up so that it looks like you’re running it efficiently, but as soon as someone tries to look inside your operation, you punish them. You investigate them and their job and what they’re doing. It’s not fair, equitable way to manage a $5 billion public budget. So all of those things contributed to me deciding to take on this campaign.

I have no illusions, I’m running against a very popular person but I just feel that every person that’s on that board should be doing a much better job in taking care of the people of San Diego and providing the services that other counties provide but this county has chosen not to. Now they’re being sued and losing by advocates for health care for other programs. Being sued to do your job is a terrible way to run a business.

Q: So when I spoke to you immediately after you announced your candidacy, you said this was a non-partisan race. But obviously partisan politics plays a huge factor. So let’s say you were elected but there were still four Republican supervisors. How are you going to get your ideas passed?

Well, this goes back to why I got involved in politics: One person makes a difference. Having me sitting on a board with four people who may not always agree with my position but having me say, “We have this money, how is it being used? What are the outcomes required by the grant? Are we meeting them? Are we going to continue to get this money in a time of need?” Having someone like me there to ask these questions and make sure they are being answered adequately and publicly will make a difference.

As I said before, as the chair of the Women’s Caucus – health care, public safety, education, those aren’t partisan issues, those are things everyone in the community needs. You don’t ask someone in the doctor’s office, “Which political party are you in?” They’re there because they need services. We don’t ask our children, “Which political party do you want to be in?” We just teach them. I think the issues I want to focus on, on the county level are not partisan issues.

Hoa Quach is the political editor for the San Diego News Network.