A revealing Newsom interviewBy Tim Redmond
It’s taken me a few days to find the time to listen to the whole thing, but the Calitics interview with Gavin Newsom is interesting -- for what he says and for what he doesn’t.
Most of the time, Newsom talks in sound bites and platitudes, much as you would expect from a candidate for governor. (“We need order of magnitude change, I’m not running to fail more efficiently.”)
And he says, toward the end of the interview, that he supports and oil severance tax and a $1.50 a pack cigarette tax to fund education. He also says that California should tax services and lower the overall sales tax rate. And like many Democrats, he would restore the vehicle license fee that Gov. Schwarzenegger cut. Which all makes perfect sense.
But on the larger issue about revenue and services, he’s awfully squirrelly. He talks about how San Francisco funds universal health care and universal preschool -- “we value these programs by funding them, finding the resources and funding them.” But then talks about “reform” -- redirecting money from one program to another. (For example, right now he’s redirecting money away from front-line health-care workers).
And he proclaims:
“Let’s not accept the parameters that we have to tax or cut.”
Actually, that’s bullshit. Because in the end, you can find some waste and redirect it (we could, for example, release all drug offenders from prison and save a few billion dollars), but it’s almost impossible politically to do anything that saves that kind of money. The waste and redirection gets you pennies. In the end, the state’s actual spending hasn’t even kept up with population growth -- and that’s at a time when federal services have been cut and state and local government has had to take up the slack.
So actually, Mr. Mayor, you DO have to tax or cut. And what I haven’t heard him say yet is exactly how he’s going to make those decisions.
I also really like this line: “My number on priority in San Francisco has been job creation.” This from a mayor who has been responsible for about 1,000 layoffs of public-sector workers. Guess those jobs don’t count.
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Comments (2)
Like most politicians, Newson is clueless when it comes to prisons. There is a long term 65,000 county jail bed shortage resulting in the shift of technical parole violators and a large number of “wobblers” from jail to prison, causing prison overcrowding. The politicians claim there is a 40,000 prison bed shortage. Based on the Legislative Analysist prison capacity figures, there is a shortage of about 3,700 beds. Non-the-less, the politicians passed AB 900 to fund $6.5 billion for construction of 40,000 prison beds and $1.2 billion for construction of 13,000 county jail beds.
A shortage of 3,700 beds could be eliminated by adding 3.700 contract beds. Contract bed annual operating costs are $30,283 less than for prison beds and would save about $112 million annually. Fixing the broken technical parole revocation system would add about 20,000 beds to prison capacity and save about $350 million annually in prison operating costs.
Posted by rich mckone | October 28, 2009 08:27 AM
Depends what those public sector workers did.
The state employees are funded by those who work in private industry, private sector jobs are probably the types of jobs he wishes foster an increase in.
Any fool can hire lots of people and expand the public-sector. The private sector has to pay for them.
The public-sector shouldn't be used to hide unemployment nor to intrude into or control the private sector, excepting in legal requirements and those should be minimal not maximal.
Posted by Chris | October 29, 2009 07:34 AM