Pringle Lambastes AQMD and Bilingual Education

One day after his triumphant rise to one of the top seats in California government, newly christened Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle criticized family planning, expressed a need to overhaul bilingual education and called for abolishment of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

In an interview Friday with The Times, Pringle--the first Republican speaker elected on the strength of GOP votes in a quarter-century--maintained that he will solidify his grip on power and remain in the office at least until November’s election. Indeed, he hopes to capture two additional seats to strengthen the GOP’s narrow majority in the 80-member house.

Pringle expects ideological warfare with the Democratic-controlled Senate as the election year heats up, but the three-term lawmaker also expressed hope that Democrats might go along with some of the reforms Assembly Republicans favor, including overhauling the handling of personal injury and consumer lawsuits.

Here are some of the views Pringle expressed to reporters Eric Bailey and Mark Gladstone:

Question: What is the most important issue facing the state today?

Answer: Job creation and strengthening the state’s economy. How you accomplish that is not one bill or one piece of legislation but a variety of things that [the GOP majority] can do to advance a much more pro-business and pro-job agenda.

Q: The GOP has always portrayed itself as the party of business. What’s at the top of your wish list?

A: I wouldn’t necessarily put one over the other. Tort reform and regulatory reform and tax restructuring for business and families are all very high at the top of that list.

Q: Do you support a tax cut?

A: The one on the table right now is the one I still support and that’s the governor’s proposed 15% across-the-board tax cut.

Q: Speaking of Gov. Pete Wilson, he seemed to be very helpful in your quest to capture the speakership, even though you didn’t support him when he ran for president. Do you owe him anything?

A: My relationship with Pete Wilson was good even when I was not endorsing him for president. . . . Yes, I asked Pete Wilson for help. I asked Republicans up and down this state for help. I asked Republicans across this country for help because the speakership and control of the California state Assembly is not just an issue relating to Curt Pringle or California Republicans. It is a much larger issue and it has a much grander scope.

Q: Given that the state Senate is in the hands of Democrats, what can a Republican-controlled Assembly accomplish? Isn’t there just going to be more gridlock?

A: No, there are a variety of bills on regulatory reform that moved forward out of the Senate last year that got bottled up in the Assembly. You have a much greater opportunity to open the debate on issues such as tax reform. . . . Additionally, I believe if [restrictions on personal injury lawsuits] and welfare reform proposals were passed out of the Assembly to the state Senate, that would create pressure on members over there to thoroughly review and discuss issues they have not even debated.

Q: Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and other Democrats describe you as a right-wing zealot. Is that a fair characterization?

A: Bill Lockyer understands where the lines are drawn. Bill Lockyer and I will battle on policy issues. That’s just natural. He is a very liberal Democrat and I am a conservative Republican. We should battle on policy issues. Unfortunately, he and others like to resort to calling people names as a way to try to whip up emotion. That’s a shame.

Q: The public is turned off to politics. What can you do as speaker to change that?

A: I believe my election as speaker will bring stability to the Assembly. . . . When you try to play the games that Willie Brown and his tag team played all through last year [when Brown handed off the speakership to two maverick Republicans supported by the Democrats], that’s what, I believe, upsets the public. Those are the kind of games they don’t want to see anymore.

Q: Isn’t your speakership a bit tenuous?

A: No, not at all. It’s an interesting concept. I have read that and seen that a couple of times in the press. The majority party has elected someone of its own. They have changed the rules. [That] was the deciding blow. . . . With that in mind, I don’t believe the speakership is in doubt through the rest of this term.

Q: How secure do you feel in the speakership in light of the ongoing investigation by the Orange County district attorney’s office into potential election wrongdoing by new Assemblyman Scott Baugh, whom you supported?

A: Well, that’s being handled in Orange County and being looked at there. I don’t believe there’s going to be any serious ramifications coming out of that for Mr. Baugh, but we will continue to do our job here.

Q: Will there be ramifications for you?

A: No.

Q: What’s your view on providing parents with vouchers allowing them to send their children to the school of their choice?

A: I supported Proposition 174 [the voucher initiative defeated in 1993] and would support some type of voucher proposal. I think a good voucher proposal out there is one offered by Assemblyman Willard Murray (D-Paramount) that targets a low-income community that has a very poor public education system and allows those families to move their kids out and put them in a school where they can get an education.

Q: What kind of school do your children attend?

A: They go to a Christian school in Cypress.

Q: Where do you stand on bilingual education in public schools?

A: I think bilingual education has been a disaster. It disadvantages both English-speaking and non-English-speaking students alike. We need to totally revamp and review that process.

Q: What is your attitude toward public funding of abortion?

A: I am opposed to abortion.

Q: What about family planning programs that might include condom distribution in schools?

A: I don’t support condom distribution in schools. . . . The concern that many people have is that one of the greatest areas of the promotion of family planning unfortunately is abortion. And I don’t think that’s the way necessarily you want to focus on family planning.

Q: What about sex education in schools?

A: I think abstinence-based programs are a very important message. I am concerned that many sex education programs overlook that message.

Q: Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) wants to see juvenile graffiti vandals paddled and reinstitute corporal punishment in schools. What do you think?

A: There’s a lot of things we need to change. Maybe there’s some things we need to go back to that have been stripped away over the years. The ability for some corporal punishment in the classroom with parental consent is something I would support.

Q: What about the consenting adults law, which allows adults to do whatever they want behind closed doors?

A: It’s not an issue I need to talk about.

Q: Do divorce laws need to be tightened to protect the family?

A: I believe [that] in strengthening the family you may want to address some issues of divorce law. But I can’t point out even what I would want to see changed. . . . I do think the underlying principle is that divorces seem to be very easy and, yes, divorce is very destructive to a family.

Q: How religious a person are you and how do your views affect your policy-making?

A: I don’t know what tags go on me, but I go to church and I pray and I have a faith and I have moral principles and, yes, it affects who I am and what I believe in.

Q: The Assembly Republicans got a lot of criticism for a recent fund-raiser at the home of Hollywood Park Chairman R.D. Hubbard. So where do you stand on the gambling issue? Should we open up the state to casino gambling?

A: I’m extremely cautious about expanding gaming at all in the state.

Q: Do you think criticism of the fund-raiser was unfair?

A: Of course that was unfair. The media looked at a single fund-raiser where [the GOP] received a contribution from Hollywood Park and Mr. Hubbard. I’ve received contributions from Hollywood Park in the past. Virtually every member of our caucus and every member of the Democratic caucus . . . have received huge contributions in the past. Just because we had a nice golf tournament and a contribution was made, I guess we became a focal point. But I think it was truly undue criticism.

Q: Do you support a bill that allows anyone who can buy a gun to also get a concealed weapons permit.

A: I support that truly in concept. I believe people have a right to protect themselves. [But] I don’t have a gun. I don’t go shooting. I’ve shot a shotgun a couple of times over my grandmother’s cornfield.

Q: There’s been a lot of tussling about the zero-emission mandate in the state that would require production of electric cars. Do you think it ought to be banned outright?

A: Yes. I believe in the free-market system. I believe that when electric cars are competitive, people will buy them.

Q: Should the South Coast Air Quality Management District be abolished?

A: Yes. Of course there should be regulation of issues related to air quality. But the way it’s done now is onerous and destructive to the state’s economy. I believe there is no entity in all of California that has destroyed more jobs and thrown more businesses out of the state than the South Coast Air Quality Management District. . . . Unfortunately, that’s a bureaucracy that’s gone out of control. It’s totally out of control.

Q: Some Democrats are complaining that you are going to be too tough on them? After being in power for 25 years, is that just sour grapes on their part?

A: It’s a wonderful line from folks who have been in control and have wielded an ax at anyone who dared to lift their head. And today they’re concerned that they no longer have their hands on the levers of power.

Q: How harsh are you going to be on them?

A: The question I have in my mind is do we treat them exactly the way they treated us two years ago? . . . Whatever happens, Democrats will have less resources. There will be fewer Democratic chairs [of committees].

Q: Some say Republicans are having trouble just figuring out how to run the computers, pay the payroll, the mechanics.

A: Oh, the mechanics of this place will continue on. This isn’t brain surgery. Most every one of the Republican members has run a business. I mean, give me a break.