Q & A : Assembly Candidates on Issues

Here are the answers from Republican primary candidates to questionnaires distributed by The Times. Some answers have been edited to fit the available space.

King Verdict

Q. Do you agree with the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King case? Beteta: No. They are very difficult to understand. I think the prosecutors did a lousy job.

Foote: I don’t have a position on it. Quite simply, I wasn’t there. I didn’t see the evidence.

Meehan: I did not sit through hours and hours of testimony so I feel unqualified to render judgment in that case.

Reed: No. The change of venue made a big difference.

Stitch: I don’t know if I agree with the verdicts because I was not there in the courtroom. It’s a shame the jury is being harassed. It hurts our justice system when people cannot use independent judgment.

Proposition F

Q. What’s your position on Measure F, the Los Angeles police reform ballot proposal that would give the mayor and Police Commission more power over the police chief? Beteta: No position.

Foote: Prop F doesn’t affect a lot of my district. I haven’t heard of a single Republican who’s for it.

Meehan: I’m against it. I want the Police Department kept independent from politics. We need a police chief who can take a tough stand against the mayor, City Hall and in the streets.

Reed: As I watched the unrest unfold and read newspaper coverage of the analysis of the aftermath, I (decided) the proposition should be approved. There’s a need to change the way (Los Angeles) exercises control over the police command.

Stitch: Against. I don’t want to put politics and corruption back into the Police Department.

Business Environment

Q. Do you believe businesses are leaving California due to a hostile business environment? If yes, how would you make California more attractive to business?

Beteta: Yes. Remove many of the restrictive regulations that are bureaucratic in nature. In the name of protection of employees, we have allowed workers’ compensation abuses.

Foote: Yes. Reform workers’ compensation. Stimulate capital formation by reforming the work of California’s corporate commissioner. Promote research and development through stronger ties between corporations and universities.

Meehan: Yes. First, we need to shorten the permit and licensing process for employers who wish to bring jobs to our state or expand their operations. Second, we need real reform of our workers’ compensation system. I would remove stress claims and streamline the insurance carrier-attorney-doctor bureaucracy.

Reed: Yes. Reform workers’ compensation insurance. Permit coordinating and streamlining, especially to shorten the time consumed.

Stitch: Yes. Reform workers’ compensation. Reduce environmental regulation fees. Provide incentives for businesses to stay in California. Study the effects of any future bureaucratic regulations and new legislation on business before enacting them.

Government Contracts

Q. Do you think state government contracts should be awarded on a “buy American” basis, with winning bidders being those who promise to use specific percentages of American workers to produce goods and services?

Beteta: I do not know how we can say what American products are. A Toyota manufactured in the U.S. by American workers at an American factory may be more American than some “domestic” cars. It’s something I need to look into.

Foote: Yes. An increase in American jobs means: increased tax revenues, decreased welfare and a higher standard of living. Winning bidders must agree also to meet high-quality standards and deadlines.

Meehan: Yes. Tax dollars spent on American workers stimulate our economy and increase our tax base. Accordingly, American bidders are, as a practical matter, less expensive than foreign bidders.

Reed: No. This will not help us in California. Maybe yes if the goods, services and workers are Californians--that would be worth some points above low bid.

Stitch: Yes. If at all possible, state government contracts should be awarded on a “buy American” basis, which would increase jobs.

Employee Insurance

Q. Do you support requiring California businesses to provide health insurance to employees or contribute to a fund to provide health care for the uninsured? Beteta: No. It’s a great imposition on small business. I prefer tax credits toward the purchase of insurance by the employee-employer.

Foote: Larger businesses, say 15 or more employees, should be able to contribute to a state health plan or comparable private plan limited to prenatal care and basic services. Smaller businesses should be able to provide employees with access to group rates.

Meehan: No. We cannot saddle California businesses with more regulation--especially in these economic times. Mandated health insurance contributions should only be addressed at the federal level.

Reed: No. Business should not bear the entire burden of providing for the uninsured. Very small businesses will not be able to afford this responsibility. If Californians want health insurance for all, then all of us should share the cost.

Stitch: No. This would cause more California businesses to go to other states with such a requirement. It would only worsen the problem of businesses leaving California, and it would create higher unemployment.

Health Care

Q. Do you support state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi’s proposed $34-billion plan, financed by a state payroll tax, for health care for California workers, people with pre-existing medical conditions and the unemployed? Beteta: No.

Foote: No. Garamendi’s flawed plan ignores disability and long-term health services. It lacks specifics on the services to be provided. His plan would worsen our anti-business climate.

Meehan: No. New taxes in these economic times are unacceptable.

Reed: No. We need to figure this health insurance problem out without a general tax increase on working people or on the businesses whose jobs we need.

Stitch: No. I oppose any new tax increases. Socializing the health care system is not going to solve our health-care crisis.

National Health System

Q. Do you support a national health care system in which the federal government would establish fees, pay all the bills and collect taxes to cover the cost? Beteta: No. I favor direct tax credits to employees, the details to be worked out by doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and government.

Foote: No. In spite of our spending nearly 12% of gross national product on health care, Medicare is nearly bankrupt. There has been significant reduction in Medicaid funding and services. We must set limits on what we are willing to pay for health care.

Meehan: No. The federal government should work toward a system of preventive care and basic care for those who cannot afford health insurance. A nationalized health-care bureaucracy would be a disaster.

Reed: No. The federal government will not do it right. Socialized medicine is not the answer.

Stitch: No. This would nearly double federal income taxes. The federal government cannot solve any problems. A good example is the Veterans Administration hospital system.

Air Quality

Q. Should state and federal air quality rules be eased to reduce the financial burdens on California industry?

Beteta: Yes.

Foote: The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s thousands of pages of plans and regulations have become a regulatory nightmare. The massive fines and jail terms they can impose are driving businesses out of this state. There are cheaper, non IRS-style approaches to try: free-enterprise smog credits and removing the 10% of automobiles causing more than 50% of the auto-based emissions.

Meehan: The rules should not be eased but the bureaucracy should be eased.

Reed: Yes, but then there must be more controls on cars and trucks.

Stitch: No.

Education Support

Q . Do you support giving state money to parents to allow them to enroll their children in schools of their choice, public or private? Beteta: Yes. Our state spends $23 billion in K-12 schools. The results have been disastrous. Parents at present have no say in schools. We must place emphasis in the first three grades of elementary education.

Foote: Parents should have a wide range of public, religious and independent school choices for their children. Consistent with the United Teachers of Los Angeles, I believe we must eliminate the savage inequalities in the public school system. There must be a higher minimum standard of quality of facilities. Voucher, earned tax credit and negative tax credit proposals must not have features aimed at controlling or destroying religious and independent schools.

Meehan: Yes. I support tax credits, but not an outright payment.

Reed: No.

Stitch: Yes.

College Tuition

Q. Should tuition at state universities and colleges be increased to help offset state budget deficits? Briefly explain. Beteta: Yes. We all must make sacrifices in solving our state budget.

Foote: No. As a professor, I want to see large reductions in governmental waste first. We do not need limousines and mansions for administrators. Instead of many layers of full-time, overpaid administrators, we need to limit administrative costs by paying professors no more than an extra $5,000 a year to perform some of the administrative functions.

Meehan: No. We can save hundreds of millions of dollars per year in our state universities and colleges by allowing qualified students to take a semester off and earn credit toward graduation by teaching in our public schools.

Reed: No. We must protect the affordability of the state colleges and universities. The diversity and stability of our society in the future depend on full access to higher education.

Stitch: No. We need to make college education more accessible, especially at a time when we need to retrain California’s aerospace and defense industry workers.

L.A. School District

Q. Do you support the breakup of the Los Angeles school district into smaller districts? Why or why not? Beteta: Yes! Yes! Yes! The Los Angeles school board has proven over the years that it is inept, incompetent and cannot administer that monstrous district. And it is too stupid to recognize it!

Foote: I support the position of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Try school-based management and separate budgets. Use a headmaster model, with all principals required to teach at least 180 hours a year and earn no more than $5,000 more than the highest-paid teacher. If there are an average of, say, 40 students per teacher, there must be no more than one administrator for every 40 teachers.

Meehan: Yes. Only through a return to the traditional small-town school district can we give parents and teachers a real voice in implementing constructive change at the local level.

Reed: Yes. The district is too big to be governed well. Administrative overhead is too high. Innovation is squelched and bureaucratic rules are paramount.

Stitch: Yes, to create more local autonomy, to give parents more say over their local public schools, and to eliminate the top-heavy, inefficient, burdensome district bureaucracy. This would allow more money to be spent in the classroom.

School Bonds

Q. Do you support reducing the votes needed to pass a school construction bond issue from two-thirds to a simple majority? Beteta: No.

Foote: Bond issues are meaningless without specifying minimum standards for credit ratings.

Meehan: No.

Reed: Yes.

Stitch: No. I oppose any attempts to weaken Proposition 13.

Death Penalty

Q. Do you support capital punishment? If so, for which crimes?

Beteta: Yes. The people of California have voted on it, passed it and it is high time it be implemented.

Foote: In general, use of the death penalty is very dangerous. Lying, mistaken identity, fabricated cases and an imperfect justice system are only a few of the reasons to fear its use. Some criminals (such as terrorists, drug kingpins and serial killers) are so dangerous that the death penalty may be the only way to protect society.

Meehan: Yes. First-degree murder. Reed: Yes. First-degree murder, premeditated and cruel. Serial murders. Murders of children, elderly and disabled, murder combined with rape or torture.

Stitch: Yes. First-degree murder. Extremely brutal child molestations and rape. Drug kingpins. Purposeful killing of police officers or other public officials.

Gun Control

Q. Do you support any form of limit on the sales of guns to individuals? If so, what? Beteta: No. It’s not the law-abiding gun owners who are responsible for the crime and violence in the streets.

Foote: Individual gun ownership is a right. However, there must be no sale of guns made of materials that security devices (at courtrooms, airports etc.) cannot detect.

Meehan: Yes. I would require a background check to screen out ex-felons and the mentally ill.

Reed: Yes. The waiting period on handguns should be extended to all guns. Gun owners should be licensed and required to pass gun safety courses.

Stitch: Yes. Convicted felons. Persons violating hunting laws and the Endangered Species Act. Persons with a history of irresponsible use or storage of firearms.

Police Force

Q. Do you support making it a crime for a police officer to fail to intervene if he or she witnesses a fellow officer using excessive force against someone? Briefly explain. Beteta: No. Those are rules best left to police departments and to internal regulations to work out.

Foote: Laws and regulations must guarantee that both police officers, who risk their lives daily, and citizens, who might be hurt or killed by excessive force, have fair investigations of each unique incident. Those who make and review police policies must assume some responsibility if police officers use tools provided to them. If you provide police officers with batons and stun guns, you should not be surprised when Rodney King and others go to hospitals with severe injuries.

Meehan: No. Such a law would have a chilling effect on law enforcement in general. Such conduct should result in severe punishment, but it should not lead to criminal prosecution against our police officers.

Reed: No. Police officers should not have criminal charges pressed if they fail to intervene. They should be disciplined for such a failure.

Stitch: Yes. It depends on the circumstances.

Campaign Funding

Q. Should political campaigns be taxpayer-funded to reduce the importance of special-interest money? Beteta: There is a need for campaign reform, but I am not sure that taxpayer-funded campaigns are the answer.

Foote: The best campaign reform would be to permit partisan candidates to pay for a candidate’s statement to be published in the voters’ guide sent by the registrar to all voters. Nonpartisan candidates have their statements in voters’ guides.

Meehan: No. Before we siphon off more of our tax revenue we should implement reform on political action committees (PACs) and special interests. First, we should require that PACs donate half of their contributions to challengers. Second, we should allow a ballot designation for those candidates who take no PAC money and abide by the Proposition 73 guidelines.

Reed: The current system needs to be changed. That may require some public funding and some new rules--like no off-year fund raising and no transfers.

Stitch: No. We have more important things to fund with taxpayers’ money than political campaigns.

Personal Finances

Q. Are you willing to make public your state and federal income tax returns for the last five years at least two weeks before the June 2 primary election? Beteta: No!

Foote: As a California State University professor, my salary is already a matter of public record.

Meehan: Yes.

Reed: No. This job isn’t that important to justify such a violation of our family privacy.

Stitch: Yes.

Affirmative Action

Q. In general, do you think affirmative action in employment of women and members of minority groups has not gone far enough, has gone too far or is about right? Briefly explain. Beteta: Yes, it has gone berserk. Now it is interpreted to include homosexuals, people with disabilities and whatever else the radical liberal agenda comes out with.

Foote: Claremont professor Frederick Lynch’s “Invisible Victims” has documented the failure of affirmative action programs. Asian students with outstanding academic records are suing our top universities for discriminating against them.

Meehan: Affirmative action has gone too far. Although necessary to break the cycle of institutionalized discrimination, it now has created a false presumption in the minds of many that women or minorities who are promoted are not promoted based on quality. This, in part, has led to the backlash which has allowed the David Dukes of the world to gain a greater degree of legitimacy among the population.

Reed: The program is good, but some employers have no commitment to it.

Stitch: It has gone far enough. Using anything other than the best person for that job leads on inefficiency.

Abortion Rights

Q. Do you support a woman’s unrestricted right to an abortion within the first three months of pregnancy? Beteta: Yes. After that, in cases of rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is in danger.

Foote: No. Rather than pretending there is no problem and remaining ignorant when about one-third of pregnancies end in induced abortions, we need public policies treating the causes of induced abortions.

Meehan: Yes.

Reed: Yes.

Stitch: No.

Abortion Funding

Q. Do you support state funding of abortions for women who cannot afford them? Beteta: No.

Foote: There are long-term public health consequences for failing to fund them in some cases: major fetal damage because a mother used drugs or had AIDS, threats to the life or health of the mother, rape or incest involving a minor. California has better options: better funding of prenatal care and dropping from the welfare rolls those who refuse to use birth control techniques yet demand repeated abortions.

Meehan: No.

Reed: Yes.

Stitch: No.

Parental Consent

Q. Do you support requiring a minor to notify her parents or a judge before having an abortion? Beteta: Yes. Minors are the responsibility of their parents.

Foote: Yes. America’s greatness has been based upon traditional family values. Government should not be an enabler of minors who wish to reject these values.

Meehan: Yes.

Reed: No. There should be no bar to access to this procedure.

Stitch: Yes. Children need the guidance of their parents or at least a judge.

Illegal Immigration

Q. Do you support the adoption of new measures such as increased border patrols and physical barriers to try to stem the flow of illegal immigration from the south? Beteta: Yes. Camp Pendleton Marines should run military exercises a quarter of a mile from the border. Their presence would stop the flow.

Foote: Yes.

Meehan: Yes.

Reed: Yes.

Stitch: Yes.

Terminal Illness

Q. Do you support the initiative likely to appear on the November ballot that would allow doctors to end the lives of people who are terminally ill in a “painless, humane and dignified” manner? Beteta: No.

Foote: While patients have the right to demand that no heroic efforts be used to save them, doctors who choose their careers to save lives will not be clamoring to end lives.

Meehan: Yes.

Reed: No.

Stitch: No.

Welfare Benefits

Q. Do you support Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to reduce welfare benefits for a family of three by 10% immediately, to $597 a month, and by another 15% for families with able-bodied adults who are not working? Beteta: Yes.

Foote: We need welfare reform in these respects: eliminate fraud, promote workfare, reform.

Meehan: Yes. Welfare was meant to be transitional, not permanent sustenance.

Reed: Yes. The state can’t afford to be as generous as we have been in the past.

Stitch: Yes. It would provide an incentive for people to get off welfare and reduce the tax burden on the people of California.

Child Care

Q. Should businesses be required to subsidize child care for the benefit of employees? Beteta: No. That’s for employers and employees to work out.

Foote: No.

Meehan: No.

Reed: No. But providing on-site child-care facilities should be encouraged through tax incentives or other mechanisms.

Stitch: No.

B-2 Bomber

Q. President Bush has urged that production of the B-2 bomber--which is assembled at a Palmdale plant--be cut from 75 to 25 planes. Do you support this reduction? Beteta: Yes. The threat of the former Soviet Union may not be there now, but the threat to the United States from other countries--China, North Korea and Middle Eastern Arab countries--is still there.

Foote: While advocating a strong national defense, I have not been able to research this problem by your deadline.

Meehan: No. Besides saving thousands of jobs, the B-2 is one of the most cost-effective military aircraft produced.

Reed: Yes. The federal government spends too much on defense at the expense of domestic programs. I know we need to cut the defense budget and I have to trust that the President is making the best choices in cuts.

Stitch: Yes. Although I support a strong national defense, we cannot afford to fully fund this program.