State Senate District 19

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) and Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels are vying in the March 7 primary for the 19th state Senate District seat being vacated by Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), who is retiring because of term limits.

McClintock, 43, a state legislator for 14 years, has championed efforts to cut taxes, including the California vehicle license tax, and to reduce the size of government and streamline bureaucracy. Mikels, 53, for 14 years a Simi Valley councilwoman or county supervisor, has advocated more local flexibility in spending and emphasized the importance of understanding local government and the need for lawmakers to work together.

The two Republicans seek to represent a district their party hasn’t lost since the early 1970s. District 19 includes most of Ventura County and parts of the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys. Nearly two-thirds of the district’s voters live in Ventura County.

The editorial boards of The Times Valley and Ventura County editions recently interviewed the two candidates. What follows are excerpts.

Tom McClintock

Question: What do you hope to do in the state Senate and will you proceed differently than you have in the Assembly?

A: I plan to continue the fight that I’ve waged in the Assembly for many years against a government that is too big and too expensive and too intrusive. I think I come to this with experience and credentials that are rare. I’ve already represented half of this district in the state Assembly for 10 years. I currently represent the other half, as I have for the past four. And I have a nationally recognized expertise in California government and California finance. So I will continue where I left off in the Assembly.

Q: What do you consider some of your biggest accomplishments in the Assembly, in terms of bills passed, legislation sponsored, legislation kept from passing?

A: The initiatives that I have driven in the state Legislature have pretty much dominated the budget debates over the last several years. It was my effort to abolish California’s abusive and outdated car tax. [That went] to the very center of the budget debate over the past several sessions. So the initiatives that I’ve launched, particularly on highway construction, the taxes for highways concept, as well as the emergency powers for the governor to expedite highway projects where a level of congestion exists, I think, will dominate much of the budget debate over this next year. I see my role in the minority, as driving the agenda on the big issues, and I think I’ve been fairly successful at that.

Q: Your crusades against the car tax and gasoline taxes and carpool lanes all served, among other things, to put more cars on the highway, to encourage more people to drive their own cars . . .

A: The cars are there.

Q: The cars are there, and more cars will be coming as a result of these measures. Does that concern you at all?

A: No. They’re coming because the population continues to increase. A radical ideology was introduced into California public policy, and especially in transportation, in 1974, and that policy was basically, if we stop building things, people won’t come. So we brought our freeway construction to a virtual standstill. In the last 25 years we’ve only added 8% to the capacity of the state highway system. The problem is people came anyway, and miles driven by Californians have increased 116% in the same period--8% in capacity, 116% increase in demand. Now we have diverted the taxes that motorists once paid at the pump for their highways to purposes unrelated to highway construction. We now bear the third-heaviest taxes per vehicle in the country. We are dead last in our expenditure for roads. So it should not be a surprise to anyone that we’re now choking in our congestion. The question that is presented to government in this and in every other field of government services is not whether the population will grow--it will; one thing we human beings are very good at over the centuries is making more human beings. The question is whether we will meet the needs that are caused by that growth. For the past 25 years, we have utterly failed to do so. In fact, we have deliberately refused to do so. We’re now dealing with the result and it’s not just transportation, it’s a wide field of other issues. Not only are we now choking in our own traffic, we are all dreading the next drought, because of what that means. People came anyway.

Q: What sets you apart from your opponent in this race? Why should voters choose you?

A: We differ, of course, on a number of key issues, such as abolishing the car tax. She opposes abolition. I, of course, not only support it but have driven the entire effort to rid the state of this abuse of tax. It’s difficult for me to answer that question beyond that because she hasn’t taken a position on many state issues. Probably the single, broadest contrast is this: She has voted for every budget that has nearly bankrupted the county of Ventura. The county’s dire fiscal situation occurred on her watch and was the most dire where she was directly responsible for oversight. She was the chairman of the oversight committee for the mental health and medical center departments where it was determined there had been systematic cases of medical fraud, of MediCal fraud, billed to the federal government. My reputation has been built in 18 years in California public policy, on fiscal responsibility and government spending controls.

Q: Where do you stand on campaign finance reform?

A: I think the most important finance reform is of electronic filing to assure that every contribution is known when it is made. Wealthy candidates will always be able to write their own checks. The candidate of modest means must raise money from others. The smaller, the lower the limit, the more time and effort must be spent in raising that money. It reaches a point where there’s not enough time in the day to stay competitive with a self-financed candidate. That’s the fallacy I see with a lot of the limitations that have been proposed on campaign contributions. [Justice] Louis Brandeis [said], “Sunlight is the best of disinfectants.” And sunlight on contributions, is a very important reform. There’s one other one that I also think would probably make a big difference, and that is simply to limit contributions to individuals, rather than to organized political action committees, corporations or unions. In other words, make the sole qualification for contributing to a candidate that you must be a living, breathing human being. In that manner, candidates must then focus their attentions not on the concentrations of money, but rather on the individual contributors themselves, who will generally be in the district and will generally be evaluating you not only on the narrow single issue that their PAC otherwise would, but on a broad range of issues.

Q: Your opponent says that you and your family live in Sacramento and you bill the taxpayers every time you decide to come down and visit the district. How do you respond to that?

A: After 20 years in public service, if the worst thing that she can say about me is I want my family to live close to me, I’ll just have to accept that. I wish the state capitol were in Thousand Oaks. It would make life a lot easier. It’s not. We’re a full-time Legislature, which means that we must be there nine months out of the year. I have a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old at home. I want them to see their daddy, and their daddy wants to see them. I come down to the district every weekend and in that respect am no different than any other member of the Legislature.

Q: In this time of bounty in state government, there’s talk about spending more on schools, while at the same time everyone also talks about accountability. What needs to be done for education?

A: As long as teachers have to labor under 7,000 pages of micro-managing regulations from Sacramento, as long as we can’t reward the good teachers, as long as we can’t fire the lousy teachers, as long as we can’t pay a brilliant science teacher more than we pay a run-of-the-mill gym teacher, the public schools will continue to fail. We are currently committing over $8,200 of public resources behind every student in California. For $8,200 per pupil, we’re already paying for the finest education system in the country, or certainly one of the finest. We’re not getting it because very little of that money is actually getting into the classroom. And as long as we manage public schools in such a way as we can’t reward excellence, they’re going to continue to fail.

I also think that parents need to be restored to the center of the decision-making process. [They] should have restored to them the ability to choose the setting that best meets their child’s individual needs.

Q: Is this the time to send back the ERAF [state Education Reserve Augmentation Fund] tax shift money that has gone from the local governments to the state?

A: Oh, it was never the time to take it in the first place. I was one of, I believe, only 14 members of the Assembly who opposed that when it occurred. I opposed it vigorously. My opponent, who often criticizes ERAF, then criticizes me for bucking Pete Wilson on several critical policy issues. Well, this was one of them. I feel rather vindicated by having been in such a distinct minority opposing that ERAF raid on our local government bonds when it occurred. And I’ve always supported giving it back. But it also must be accompanied by a concurrent rollback in all of the taxes and fees that were raised to make up for that money.

Q: How many bills were you able to get through the Legislature last year?

A: Oh, a few. I’m a member of the minority, so none of us get very many approved. I decided, when I returned in 1996, I could either concentrate on little bills of no importance and get a few of them through and signed, or I could drive major issues and affect the governing agenda of California. I chose that path, and I think been fairly successful at it. However, AB 62, which made possible the independence of local communities--it made it possible for the San Fernando Valley to contemplate detachment from Los Angeles--is a measure that I thought was critical both locally as well as meeting the broader test of an important and significant statewide reform.

Judy Mikels

Question: What are the first three things you would do when you get to Sacramento, on behalf of the people of this district?

Answer: I believe what really needs to be done is to start building consensus across party lines and start building coalitions that truly attack the problems that the state and each of our individual regions are facing. When I go to L.A. and work with SCAG [Southern California Assn. of Governments] and listen to my counterparts--other parts of the region--our problems are all basically the same. I feel that it’s that way in the state.

People who haven’t worked locally don’t understand that you can’t attack a part of a problem and be successful, and that’s what they’ve been trying to do. I would like to see us start thinking in terms of education, economic development, public safety. Those are all interrelated. You can’t have economic development if you don’t fix the education system because if large employers can’t find good workers, they’re not going to relocate here. And if we don’t have an educated public, then we are not going to be able to sustain our economic base, because we’re going to have anarchy one of these days if we don’t have young persons growing into adulthood who have a good, solid educational grasp. And I don’t believe that we have that. Without infrastructure, we don’t have economic development. Without economic development, we can’t afford to improve our schools. You’ve got to change the entire system, and starting with moving control back down to the local level and moving the money back down to the local level.

Look at the [proposed] Juan Soria school. Oxnard School District feels it can only put that school on [a certain] piece of property, because of requirements from Sacramento. The only problem with that is that goes against the local mentality, because it is in prime agricultural land and it also puts the students up against strawberry fields. So what happens? Do we eventually lose the strawberry fields? Do we eventually have lawsuits that cripple the school district in costs? It’s all driven by Sacramento, because Sacramento refuses to accept other areas in Oxnard for that school.

We’ve got to get some local control pushed down to the community so they can make their decisions. . . . I see it as a real systemic problem, more than individual problems. That’s what I want to do in the beginning.

Q: Once you get there, are you still going to be as mad about the ERAF [state Education Reserve Augmentation Fund] money, and what are you going to do to get it back for the locals?

A: The more local officials who move up . . . to the Legislature, the greater the understanding of what the ERAF shift means. When the local agencies that deliver all of the services locally have their property tax dollars shifted by [the] state, we flat don’t have the income for things like fixing potholes and putting cops on the street and keeping our libraries open and maybe making them bigger and keeping them full of books. I don’t believe that the state, when they did that, had any clue. . . . ERAF is a symptom of the disease, but the real disease is that we don’t have a solid financial relationship with clearly defined revenue streams to each agency.

Q: What can you offer that your opponent can’t? What sets you apart in this race?

A: Oh, things like common sense, living in my district . . . More importantly, I believe that it is my background and all of the experience I’ve had from being a business owner, a wife and a mom and a [Simi Valley] planning commissioner and a [Simi Valley] City Council member and a [Ventura County] Board of Supervisors member. I’ve dealt with the laws on a daily basis and struggled with things like hospitals and health care and the uninsured. My opponent went straight from college to an aide’s job in a senator’s office and from there to the [state] Assembly and has been there ever since.

Q: Where do you stand on term limits?

A: For me, it’s great. I’m 53 years old, and by the time I go through eight years in the Senate, I’m going to be on a nice desert home in Arizona or something. I don’t like term limits because I think the voters abdicated their responsibility. I think they took the easy way out. And I think it’s discouragement with government that is why they voted for it, but also not caring any longer. . . . That’s my philosophical problem with term limits. Practically speaking, I think it works. I do believe that the term limits should be longer than they are because to become effective sometimes takes two or three years, which is unfortunate. I would have preferred eight years and 12 years--four terms and three terms, because I think it adds some stability but still prevents stagnation and power-structure building.

Q: [Tom] McClintock has crusaded against the car tax and gas taxes and carpool lanes. Do you differ with him on any of those issues.

A: Philosophically, any tax we can reduce is fine. Car taxes, unfortunately, really impact local government. . . . Does it work? Not really. You look like a hero because you’re reducing taxes, but nobody’s telling you that that’s also impacting the one thing you want the most, which is your local community. He’s not offering to take money out of the state general fund coffers. He wants to take it out of local government coffers. Especially in this time of excess that we’re in, I’d like to see some constitutional guarantee that that revenue stream, which has been planned for and budgeted and allocated, be guaranteed back, either out of the state general fund or however you can do it.

As far as the gasoline sales tax going strictly for use on roads, on streets and highways, I don’t have a problem with that. I feel very firmly that there should be a nexus between the tax and the services produced by it. It’s not a real good argument when you say, “If we took all the gas tax, and it strictly went to the roads, we could build our way out of this congestion problem.” First, you’re never going to build your way out of a congestion problem. Second, [with] our efforts in creating greater and greater fuel efficiency in vehicles and hopefully getting people to move away from single-occupant vehicles [toward] car-pooling and transit and all of the proper things to do, that gas tax should decrease, not increase. So there again, you’re placing a future plan on a revenue stream that’s not dependable.

As far as the HOV [high-occupancy vehicle] lanes, we’ve got research and facts and figures that show that if you open those lanes up and no longer require multi-occupant vehicles, the congestion gets worse, not better. Those lanes are not under-utilized.

Q: What are some things the state can do to encourage people to do the right thing in terms of mass transit, car-pooling and other things that would relieve congestion, say on the Ventura Freeway?

A: The biggest, most important thing is: Don’t give up on what we’re doing. Find the ways, whether it’s putting more money into transit and less into construction of highways, so that you can have the schedules, the dependability, and so that the public will want to use [mass transit]. . . . Almost everybody, if they have to commute a long way, would much rather sit on a train or a bus with a cup of coffee and a newspaper than to have to sit in smog and [have] the frustration. We need to start thinking creatively. Smaller buses, shorter trains, to keep the cost down, so you can have more frequency of stops, better routes.

Q: Where do you stand on gun control?

A: We’ve owned guns all of our lives; we’re hunters. But I have absolutely no problem with reasonable and sensible gun control. There’s no reason for military-style weapons to be in the hands of the public. If someone is a certified gun collector and they want to add one--a style of something--I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. I have no problems with waiting periods. I have no problems with background checks. But every gun owned by every person registered with a governmental agency? Over my dead body.

Q: What’s your view on school vouchers--public money for private schools?

A: I’m not totally opposed on the standard argument [that] public money shouldn’t go to private schools. I have two fears. One, the most important, is that if you dismantle or disadvantage the public school system, I believe it will be the worst thing we could do in our country. Vouchers are doing nothing more than running away from the problem. You’re not going give enough vouchers . . . to go to a strictly private school system. So all you’re doing is allowing for a lack of diversity, another antisocial move. I’d rather see us rebuild the system so that we have a really strong public school system. My second fear is that with vouchers we could end up destroying the private school system. I don’t see how you’re going to avoid restrictions and strings and requirements if tax dollars start going into private schools. You could end up with two systems that are bad, instead of fixing one and letting [the other] ride along as it has always ridden in the past. Where I’d like to see vouchers is in areas where there are overcrowded schools and no way to fix that right away.