Valley Interview : On Brink of Departure, Roberti Talks of His Past, State’s Future

The last time state Sen. David A. Roberti was a private citizen was in 1966, three years before man landed on the moon.

Now Roberti is preparing to end his 28-year political journey, rejoining civilian life after a career that boosted him to the heights of Senate president pro tem for a record 13 years.

In nearly three decades in Sacramento, Roberti served in the Assembly and then the Senate, representing Hollywood, East Los Angeles and, most recently, the San Fernando Valley.

He entered the Legislature on a wave of protest against the Vietnam War. He leaves it believing that California is in the midst of another sea change--this time in demographics, the economy and the state’s fiscal affairs.

As he looks for a new job, probably in law, Roberti has started teaching a political science course at USC. In a recent interview, he talked about a range of issues as he prepares to leave office in December.

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Question: You’ve served in the Legislature for 28 years now, and you are about to become the first legislator to be displaced by voter-mandated term limits. How do you feel about term limits? Do you still oppose them, or do you think they may eventually lead to good government?

Answer: The term limits we have are too extreme. Especially in the state Assembly, where six years is just way too short. California’s problems are too complex to be solved in a sort of musical-chairs, revolving-door kind of legislative system.

Having said that, I think there probably is a benefit to term limits that aren’t quite as drastic. If a longtime officeholder chooses to run again, fine. They should be able to do so--after a break from the Sacramento or Washington routine. You can get awfully wound up in what you’re doing in office. So, being out of office, being forced to consider the outside world, I think, will be a liberating experience for a number of legislators.

A lot of power players and special interests will find that, maybe in a legislator’s last couple of years in office, he or she is somewhat detached from their influence. So that might be good.

But our term limits are too short. I think that’s the biggest problem. It’s not with the idea of having them. Because change is inevitable and usually good.

Q: Looking back at your legislative career, what are some of its biggest highlights and your proudest achievements?

A: I think I’ve had legislation covering the whole sweep of life in California. I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish, particularly with banning assault guns, which I hope is the start of a wave of rationality across the country.

I was able to get child care, urban parks and waste management legislation passed. I’ve been able to pass the California Privacy Act. I’ve been a pretty good environmentalist. I think, to an extent, it’s because of my work that renters are now part of the California political landscape and are not just a forgotten population.

Q: What are some of your regrets--things you wish you would have accomplished or seen the Legislature as a whole accomplish?

A: As far as policy is concerned, frankly I think one of the things we need to do in California is restructure our governmental system. We have too many jurisdictions, both horizontal and vertical. It’s too complex, too self-serving.

Under the guise of local control, we create a multitude of governmental bodies, creating gridlock and logjam. We don’t integrate our decision-making. We have our air quality boards and transportation agencies, without giving any thought to the fact that maybe these should be coordinated together.

It’s a feature of California life that whenever we have a problem, we create an ad hoc commission or governmental body to deal with that. Therefore, we create a system of ad hoc bodies dealing with one issue without any perspective of how one issue plays on another.

It is very difficult to change once you go down that road. But for California government to function, that is something that has to be dealt with.

Q: As you prepare to leave office, what kind of shape do you see California in?

A: California, in the long run, is in good shape. As they say in real estate, the three most important things are location, location, location. California has it. We’re on the edge of the Pacific Rim. We have a long seacoast. We have transportation and educational systems that, frayed as they may be, are in place. So in the long run I think the prognosis is looking very, very good.

In the short run, we’re having all the problems that usually are attendant to a major demographic change, both in the type of people who live here and the numbers of people who live here. Obviously we have to work those out without resorting to rhetoric. We’re so concerned about who’s living here, rather than how we educate the people that are here. Long-range, California is going to prosper based on whether we have an educated population.

Q: How do you feel about Proposition 187, the ballot measure to limit services to illegal immigrants?

A: Terrible. The controlling of the borders has to be done. That’s a legitimate issue. We have to have some assistance for that. But Proposition 187 presumes we will be tossing little kids out of school. If they are undocumented, is that how we are going to solve our problems? What does that say about civilization in California? Or people of one background getting along with people of another background?

In the last analysis, we have to be civil with each other, we have to learn to live with each other, we have to understand each other. And throwing little kids out of school is not going to solve the problem. It’s just cruel. I hope the polls are wrong. In the long run, it’s going to cause us much more societal pain for having done this than for the costs we’re going to be facing.

We can’t pretend that there aren’t costs attendant to undocumented immigration. We need help from the federal government, both in terms of money and controlling the border. And for those people who entice illegal immigration, I think there should be penalties. But going after little kids and people who are sick--to me, it’s incredible that we have come to that point in California. Which now might mark me as a hopeless liberal, but I think it’s shameful.

Q: How do you regard the budgetary clash between the cost of crime prevention and maintaining prisons, and the cost of education?

A: I don’t know if I necessarily consider it a clash. I think the biggest problem is the two-thirds vote required in the Legislature on the budget. Because we sort of accept that as a given, as an inevitable, as something that we are never going to change. Looking at that, we then say, well, we have a clash between all the competing interests.

But the fact of the matter is, we have to have a chance to do a better job. I think it would be a mistake to pass Proposition 184, the “three-strikes” initiative which bars changes in the law without a two-third legislative majority. I voted for it here, but you have to leave the Legislature some room to adjust. If there isn’t enough money, then obviously, we will have to adjust.

Q: Is there anything the Legislature could have--or should have--done differently to prepare for the budgetary crisis we now are in? Are there steps that should have been taken to cope with the aftereffects of Proposition 13?

A: I think in retrospect we should not have so generously bailed out local government after the implementation of Proposition 13. Maybe what we succeeded in doing was only frustrating the will of the people and making it impossible to understand what the problems were. Now that the problems have occurred, we don’t have a cause and effect.

Short of state bailouts, local governments would have found the mechanism to adjust to the extent they could adjust--to the extent that you create a cause and effect and let the people make a decision. If the effects aren’t as bad vis-a-vis the benefit of the tax cut, then that’s the decision they want to make--fine. But we created a situation where you couldn’t make an intelligent decision because you couldn’t see any cause and effect. You could probably say it was a mistake.

Q: What do you think will be the lasting impact of the state’s taking back property tax in 1992-93 from counties and local governments, reversing the earlier bailout?

A: Well, it’s not a lasting impact of taking the bailout back, it’s the lasting impact where finally you have Proposition 13 felt in its reality. The problem is, a lot of people aren’t going to believe that’s the reason for the cutbacks because there’s no immediacy about it. I think the reason why we’re closing libraries, and some counties don’t even have them anymore, is Proposition 13, and the cutback of services. So if you’re talking about regrets, we should have undertaken a more political and vigorous addressing of the concern over property tax.

It wasn’t that we didn’t hear the public, we did. But we weren’t organized about it. We should have had a concise, prompt, unified response. I think we could have come up with something that was real property tax relief and would have had the support of the public. And we had missed the political opportunity to present a program and then have enough time to sell it. So if you’re talking about another policy regret, I guess that’s the biggest one. I don’t think anything else comes close.

Q: Is there anything you’d like to add?

A: I guess reflections on the mixed emotions of leaving the place. It’s sort of like, hey, I’m getting my privacy back, and the price of that is losing the fun of being in the Senate.

I’m the first legislator to go through term limits, and to others who are going to face it: Maybe it’s not so bad. So I’m not saying that term limits are great, but longevity in public office in a democratic system has an element of inconsistency about it.