A Dearth of Regard : Board Backs Off Plan to Establish Self-Esteem Panel

It may be the rage throughout the rest of California, but there will be no Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility in San Diego County. At least not officially, anyway.

A frustrated Supervisor Leon Williams, who had advocated the creation of a local group to augment the work of the well-publicized 25-member statewide task force commissioned by the legislature, withdrew the proposal Tuesday because it was clear there was no support for it among his colleagues.

Instead, Williams will attempt to revive the idea by having an unofficial task force formed through his office, which will try to coordinate the work of about 70 people who have volunteered to help.

Ostensibly, the task force died because other supervisors were reluctant to pay the $26,500 the county administration said it would take to fund it. Supervisor Susan Golding, for example, said that while she generally supported the concept, she couldn’t vote to spend the money to create it at a time the county is having difficulty finding revenues to support state-mandated programs.

Alternative Proposal Dies

Even an alternative offered by Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey to have a coalition of existing county advisory committees take over the responsibility and work of the self-esteem task force went nowhere. Brad Truax, representing the Human Relations Commission, whose chairman would oversee the coalition, said that while the commission also supported the concept, it would mean dropping other projects.

But Williams, speaking with reporters after the supervisors meeting, said there was also another reason behind the task force’s official demise: “There’s some feeling it’s not direct or concrete enough . . . you can’t measure it in direct units.”

Equally mystified by the county’s stance was Michael Bunzel, a staff member of the statewide self-esteem task force and an assistant to Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), the legislator behind the idea.

“In San Diego there’s a reluctance” with accepting both the value and “the whole concept that’s disturbing, to say the least,” Bunzel told reporters. Earlier he had told Golding during the meeting: “To be honest Mrs. Golding, we haven’t seen a broad-based level of support in this county.”

Bunzel noted that 31 of the state’s 58 counties have officially established task forces, and that most have simply absorbed associated costs into ongoing programs and that all have relied heavily on volunteers. “There are creative ways to find funding,” he told the board, adding later that “there’s been no difference between liberal and conservative counties or rural and urban counties” among the 31 counties with task forces.

“This is not just a feel-good committee,” he said, “but it’s something that leads to personal and social responsibility.”

And that is at the core of the statewide task force, which was created in 1986 when a dogged Vasconcellos convinced the Legislature and the governor to spend $735,000 on a three-year study of self-esteem. The statewide group is supposed to submit its report in January, 1990, a document that in part will be based on information generated by the various county task forces.

Backed by Research

The underlying premise--supported by the work of numerous social researchers--is that low self-esteem is the cause of a plethora of social ills such as child abuse, welfare dependency, teen-age pregnancy, alcohol and drug addictions, and crime and violence.

Society’s lack of respect for itself, Vasconcellos has said, translates into multibillion-dollar problems for government as it tries to cope with these ills through the construction of jails and prisons or funding of welfare programs.

Despite its lofty goals, the statewide task force has taken its share of hits in the media, which early on zeroed in on its quintessential California image as a New Age mecca. It was frequently satirized by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, whose character Barbara Ann “Boopsie” Boopstein found herself a member of the task force.

Request Languished

Locally, though, Williams’ difficulty was much closer to home. He says that about last spring, the statewide task force sent notices to all board of supervisors chairmen throughout California asking them to create local task forces to promote self-esteem and personal and social responsibility. But the request languished with then-Chairman Brian Bilbray, Williams said.

Tired of waiting for what Williams called “a serious effort” from Bilbray, his office resurrected the proposal last December, leading the county’s analysis and report. Bilbray was not available for comment.

“I’m resolved to do it out of my office with volunteer help,” Williams said. “I’m convinced we can make it happen . . . we believe it’s time to act now.”