Testimony : ONE PERSON’S STORY ABOUT A CHANGING ORANGE COUNTY : ‘My Jails Are Busting at the Seams’

My parents were migrant farm workers who traveled throughout the Southwest harvesting crops, and I keep a picture in my office of the shack where we lived in my early years. My grandparents were born in Mexico. My mom and dad both were born in Texas and settled in Orange County, where I’ve been since I was about 6 or 7 years old.

I grew up in an environment of poverty, lacking a lot of material goods. But what I did have were two very good parents who insisted that we get a good education, because education was going to be the way out of poverty for us.

At graduation time, I increasingly hear people say it seems like Asians are taking all of the academic awards. And almost saying it with a sense of reservation or disappointment. My response is that the reason that Asian-Americans are enjoying such phenomenal academic success at virtually all levels of education in this country is because there is a strong priority and commitment in the family to education. That’s empowerment in America at its best, because we’ve always believed in education as empowerment.

I’m a strong believer that we need to have a strong educational system in this state. As a county supervisor, my juvenile institutions are busting at the seams. My jails are busting at the seams. And I’m a strong believer that there is a correlation. That if you provide somebody a good education, maybe that will help relieve overcrowded juvenile institutions and my overcrowded jails. How many more jails can you build at a cost of $120,000 a cell and then maintain an inmate at $15,000 to $20,000 a year?

I don’t think there is the gap that perhaps once existed between Los Angeles and Orange County. So when you ask me about the urban problems, I acknowledge that we have those, but the beauty of our process is that we respond on a regional level as opposed to saying, “Well, that’s Santa Ana’s problem.”

I’m a fiscally conservative Republican. I strongly believe that we have to recognize and understand the changes that occur in our society and to be willing and ready to provide governmental services at a high level of efficiency but also at a level that recognizes and understands the makeup of our community.

I have a fundamental belief that we have to recognize ethnic diversity as a strength. In Orange County, in a very short period of time, we have seen a dramatic demographic transition with the growth of the Asian and Hispanic communities. If you walk four blocks from my office, you see a downtown area that is probably 95% Hispanic businesses that are flourishing. Then you go over to Garden Grove, you go to Westminster, you see the Vietnamese community, the Cambodian, the Korean community growing by leaps and bounds.

As I like to say to people, the color of Orange County is changing dramatically--to the comfort of some and to the discomfort of others. But given the realities, I think there are some great opportunities for us to celebrate our diversity. The 1990 Census took many people by surprise because no one imagined that Orange County would change demographically, ethnically, so much in such a short period of time and virtually across the face of Orange County, from Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano to La Habra and Anaheim and Garden Grove and Orange.

The change has been economic and political. Now over 30 Hispanic elected officials and four or five Asians serve in public office in the county. The chancellor of the largest college system in Orange County is Hispanic. Dr. Milton Gordon, an African-American, is president of Cal State Fullerton. I represent a district that is very non-Hispanic; I ran as a county supervisor who happened to be Hispanic.

I had a recent experience which sort of brings me back down to earth. I was at a black-tie dinner here in Orange County, standing in front of a major hotel with 50-100 men dressed in tuxedos. We were all dressed the same way. And we sort of all looked alike. A guy pulls up in a Mercedes-Benz, gets out and heads right for me with keys hanging out in hand, asking for a ticket. “Excuse me, I don’t work here, pal,” I said.

And I thought to myself, now, why of all people, we’re all dressed alike, he chose to head toward me and assume that I must be the valet who parks cars? It was a reminder to me that we’ve still got work to do. So that people understand that as our diversity grows, so grows the potential of people and their ability to serve in positions of public office and in new roles in society, which include being a county supervisor.

I don’t lose sight of the fact that while government has to be efficient, government also has to be understanding and compassionate. Because when I was growing up in the migrant camps, it was a public-health nurse that came and checked on me. It was a public-health nurse that gave me my shots. It was a federally funded day care center that provided me with care while my parents labored in the fields. So I have been the recipient of some of those programs and have never forgotten.

You can’t live in those kinds of conditions and worse, as I tell people. We were so poor that the same tub that my mother bathed us in as infants, as kids, was the same tub in which she cooked the tamales at Christmastime at the camp. And people can’t seem to grasp that a lot of times. We’ve got a 13-year-old and it’s like, what are you talking about? We get the typical, “Oh, come on Dad, that was then; this is now.”

But people can’t grasp it, yet when that’s all you have, that’s all you have. And I haven’t forgotten that.

I, along with (former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) Jack Kemp, strongly believe that people need an opportunity to be empowered. And sometimes that is a term that people don’t fully understand unless you’ve been in a situation where you have come from nothing. To just be given a little something to make something big of your life. And that’s where I come from. I’m not here to give handouts. But I am here to give people a hand and assist them in empowering themselves so that they can make something of their lives, as I was able to do. It’s a very fundamental concept. And it’s a very American concept.