Wilson Discusses ‘Hard Times’

KJLH: This morning we were taking calls from some of our listeners and lot of the concerns were focusing on education. What are the problems? What’s the problem with the lottery? What happened to that money?

Wilson: There are two things we ought to focus on. One, obviously, is the funding of education. As everybody knows, because of these very hard times, the state . . . has for the third straight year experienced a tremendous drop in revenues. If people aren’t working, obviously they can’t pay taxes.

This year, for the second year, we will maintain the same dollar-per-pupil spending. That is very hard to do. In order to do it, we have been compelled to cut spending for almost everything else.

The lottery money goes for two things. It goes for prizes for the people who play the lottery, but the rest of it, other than some amount for administration, goes to education. (Note: Wilson said about 50% of the money goes to prizes, about 10% to 15% pays for administration of the lottery and the remaining 36% to 37% goes to schools.)

The problem is that never in history has anything been quite so oversold as the explanation that was made when the lottery was on the ballot. The fact of the matter is that even when it was operating at about double its present capacity, it was still only a tiny fraction of what’s required for educational funding.

Caller: I’m unemployed, which means I’m not able to do my fair share in paying taxes. I ended a 16-year career in the computer industry, I used my retirement money to survive and to retrain myself, went back to work for three months in the aerospace industry and was laid off again. Unemployment has run out. I’m trying to maintain a home in the community . . . and I’m living on the edge. Where do I go for help?

Wilson: Your situation is unhappily typical of many. You are someone who has worked hard, you have a long record of quality employment. I admire you for making the effort to be retrained, and really the answer to your question is almost suggested by the question itself. You have made the effort . . . you are diligently seeking employment. You are going to be employed.

But in order to be employed, we’ve got to have people who are capable of creating jobs. The government doesn’t do that. The responsibility of the government is to allow those in the private sector to exist in a jobs climate that lets them employ other people. Unfortunately one of the things we have found is that in California over the period of the 1980s when the good times were raging, we were not sensitive to the fact that California was not nearly as competitive as it ought to be. We are in sharp competition . . . with all the other states and the other nations that tax employers less than we do. In particular, I’m talking about the small-business owner as the employer. That’s who employs 85% to 90% of our work force.

In order for you and other people like you with high skills and high desire to be employed, we’ve got to create that climate where we can put back to work 800,000 people in this state.

Caller: Where were you during the most recent uprising in Los Angeles, and is your presence here just to, as with many other politicians, gain the minority vote?

Wilson: Well, sir, I’m going to have to say, “Where were you?” because I was here and I thought fairly visible because I saw myself on the evening news every night for about 10 days. I am obviously interested in the minority vote, but I’m interested in doing the job. That’s what I got elected to do.

KJLH: Are you happy with the pace of the rebuilding so far?

Wilson: I think it’s a very tough thing to do. It has been tough in a recession to get people to invest . . . and that is what creates the jobs. And frankly, it’s obviously difficult to get people to go into a riot-torn area and make investment. I’m not happy with the pace, because I’d like to see more investment coming in and more job creation.

When I met with a number of business owners from the damaged areas, what we heard from the businessmen was, “What we need is relief from a lot of the things that raise our costs of doing business.”

Caller: Why are the operating costs for the companies in California so high? How do you plan to keep companies from moving out of California? Is there a way to reduce some of these costs?

Wilson: Workers’ compensation costs are absolutely killing small-business owners in this state, and they’re driving them either out of state or out of business. It is a system that is ridden with fraud.

The other thing is that if you try to open a small business in Los Angeles County, you’ve got to get about 80 separate permits. One of the things that (we’ve) been working on here is to try to have a one-stop shop so that people can come in and the different agencies . . . can provide him with what he needs.

We have a small-business loan guarantee fund in this state. Through the leverage that is possible by the state being the guarantor, we encourage a lot of private lenders to make loans to the small-business man and woman.