State Senate District 23

California Assembly members Sheila Kuehl and Wally Knox are vying in the March 7 primary for the 23rd state Senate District seat being vacated by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles).

Both Democrats and both forced by term limits to leave the Assembly, the two have waged a campaign so far noted more for the similarities of the candidates’ positions than for their differences.

Kuehl, who represents the 41st Assembly District, is an attorney and former actress who has championed health care issues, social justice causes and the environment. She served as Assembly speaker pro tem.

Knox, who represents the adjoining 42nd District, is also an attorney. He was instrumental in rolling back 11-digit dialing in the 310 area code and in obtaining funding for two projects to help traffic flow at the San Diego-Ventura freeway interchange.

They seek to represent a largely affluent, well-educated district that stretches from Woodland Hills, Calabasas, Sherman Oaks and Studio City to Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica.

The Times Valley Edition editorial board recently interviewed the candidates. What follows are excerpts.

Wally Knox

Question: Tell us why voters should cast a ballot for you as opposed to your opponent. What distinguishes you and your record?

Answer: I think it’s pretty clear. I listen very closely to the district about the issues that are really important in the district and to people in the district. I then go to work on the toughest ones to solve. I have an amazing record of being able to achieve success on those issues. I think that’s what real leadership is about. As I look back on my record, on the kinds of things I’ve really loved working on, they all came right out of the district.

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Q:. Such as?

A: I’ll go through the points: The 405 / 101 [San Diego-Ventura freeway] interchange issue came right out of the district. About a year ago I went public with that issue, stood up on the Mulholland overpass, and said, “We have to begin now.” Working on that issue, which is the first step in dealing with the 405 / 101, sparked a host of other activity by leading in that area.

[Los Angeles Police] Chief Bernard Parks literally sat down with me and said, “I want you to do something that’s impossible. I want to you to carry a bill to limit handgun sales for the first time.” . . . That was three years ago. I got 30 votes on the Assembly floor the first year. My plan was this year to get 35 votes. Columbine took place, and within 48 hours, I brought the issue before the Assembly and got the exact number of votes needed, 41, to move the bill off the floor. Had Columbine not taken place there’s no chance that bill would have passed. That’s leadership: taking on an issue that literally was presented to me as impossible.

My community, the Jewish community, came to me two years ago to create a Holocaust insurance registry in California. How could any legislator vote against a bill to bring justice to victims of the Holocaust who had been told, “We don’t know about your policy. Go away”? And yet, it was very clear that some--I should make this clear, some insurance companies--were determined they [unpaid policyholders] would die. First year, I introduced the bill; their strategy was to be invisible all the way through the Assembly. The state Senate brought the bill up at midnight, . . . and they almost killed it. The objective was to do it when the press was not around. We put out the word that this was going on. The lobbyists who were Jewish dropped everything. We literally had banker lobbyists standing next to a retail clerk lobbyist, standing next to the California Restaurant Assn. lobbyist. These are people who are completely at loggerheads 99% of the time. They came to the Senate, worked with me, told the Republican leadership, “You do this and I will hold a press conference like nothing you have ever seen.” [Sen.] Herschel [Rosenthal, D-Los Angeles] brought the bill up 10 minutes later, and no one would vote against it. And then [Gov. Pete] Wilson vetoed it. Brought it back. [Gov.] Gray Davis signed it. It’ll be in place in April.

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Q: This race has been discussed in light of what it says about term limits: Two well-respected candidates with similar views on many issues are running against each other. Would you do anything to undo or liberalize term limits?

A: I think the limit is too brief. I support term limits but I haven’t settled on what I think the appropriate limit would be. I also am convinced that for the legislators to forward that idea is virtually nonsensical. If there’s going to be reform on the issue, it absolutely has to come from a legitimate grass-roots source. I learned a lot in my first few years in the state Legislature. I do not think I would have been able to do the 310 issue, another issue that came straight out of the district. . . . I couldn’t have moved that bill without the knowledge that I’d built up in the Assembly.

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Q: Both you and your opponent have said that education issues will be most important in California’s future. What do we need to do to reform education?

A: There are four things I would focus on, and not just one year, and not just one bill, but for a decade--for the rest of my life. Every child has to have a competent, hopefully excellent, teacher. That teacher has to be teaching in an excellent classroom. That teacher and classroom have to be fully supplied and stocked. But those three will fail completely if a fourth element is not there, and that is accountability. Accountability starts with the students. If you know how the students are doing, you can figure out, in general, how the teachers are doing, how the school is doing, how the district and the system are doing. If you don’t know how the students are doing, I challenge you to know anything else about the educational system.

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Q: How do you know?

A: You’re going to have to test. We have a testing system in California that was set up some years ago. We need to monitor that and make sure it’s up to snuff continually. We need to move beyond that and work on other accountability measures.

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Q: How do you get the prepared teachers, the excellent classrooms?

A: We’re going to have to spend more money. . . . If the schools are going to compete for the caliber of person necessary, we’re going to have to recognize that we want these people to be effective. And that is going to cost a significant amount of new money.

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Q: What about health care / HMO reform and patient rights?

A: The single greatest problem that was not addressed in the recent round of reform was access: Do I have access to quality health care? Two years ago, I created an audit of HMO and insurance company practice on denying, downgrading and delaying health claims. I have legislation moving through the Legislature that would penalize HMOs with an interest fee payment if they engaged in that kind of conduct. The HMOs and insurance companies far, far too much are refusing to provide needed health service or, if a doctor provides needed health service, are refusing to pay for it, or are re-categorizing it on a level that simply doesn’t compensate the medical group or doctor or health facility for the work that’s done. That is reducing the quality of health care, and that has to be addressed.

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Q: What role does the state have to play in the dispute over Van Nuys Airport?

A: There’s a significant role. Federal government can preempt the entire field, through federal legislation. Federal law specifies a state role. The state serves as a body to grant exemptions from what, in essence, is a kind of a zoning law for the airports on noise issues.

We have the authority to create a penalty structure if there are violations of the noise ordinance. We haven’t done that. It’s something we can do and should do. The second thing the state can do is decide if the footprint--the defined area of concern about the noise of the airport--is too small or too large. The current footprint is too small. We need to expand that to take in additional homeowners. The third thing we need to do is to get the jet aircraft owners out of the old jets and into the new jets.

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Q: How do you get the people to move from the old, noisy jets to the new jets?

A: If you have real penalties in place for violations of reasonable noise ordinances, you’re going to create a motivation to move out of noisy jets. I think it would be appropriate to craft a small but interesting tax benefit to move a person from an old, noisy jet to a new, quieter jet. There’s a social benefit attached to that. The governor has indicated this year that he’s open to some discussion of using the tax laws to move people in particular directions.

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Q: Any further topics on which you would like to be heard?

A: One of the lessons I’ve learned about this new term-limits environment is that to lead requires a different style of politics. The old style was, you’d go to someone you served with for 20 years and say, “Mark, can you give me a vote on my bill?” And Mark would say, “OK, Wally.” The new way you move legislation that’s really tough is exemplified by the 310 situation. You go public. If the public is really with you, if the media will cover the issue so you can communicate to people about what’s going on and if you can hang tough in the state Legislature, you can move mountains.

We have the potential to work with people on the [proposed directory assistance fee increase] issue in the same way, to create a real synergy between the legislator and the people and turn this from angry discontent into action, to change the system.

Pacific Bell went to the PUC [California Public Utilities Commission] and literally said, “We want the change [the 411 fee hike] because we need to boost our profits.” The cost of providing the service has declined [but they] want the price to go up. . . . [Two PUC] appointees voted against that. Three holdovers voted for it. We can rescind that legislatively, and then I’m hopeful that [a new PUC] appointee, coming down the pike in about a year or so, will give us a PUC that’s consumer oriented.

The major lesson I’ve learned in the state Legislature is that there’s a real need for listening to people closely, forging a very tight bond with people. That’s how you get major things done.

Sheila Kuehl

Question: Tell us what sets you apart from your opponent in this race and why voters should mark the ballot for you.

Answer: I think what sets me apart from my opponent is leadership. I’ve been in the Assembly for three terms and so has Wally [Knox]. But in my three terms, I think that I went beyond simply bringing my own pieces of legislation, getting them through and going home.

In my second term, for instance, I was appointed speaker pro tem of the Assembly. I was the first woman in the history of the state to do that. That means two things. One, you preside over all the meetings of the Assembly on the floor. You organize the work of the Assembly. But a second and more important thing is that it puts you on the leadership team. The job of the leadership team is to make certain that there is an overall agenda for our leadership in the Assembly. We campaigned a lot in ’96 to take back the Assembly. If there’s going to be a difference, it’s in the larger agenda, so that we can do health care reform, an education reform package, so that we can overhaul the child support system if it’s failing, so that we can do something about mental health, about housing, about transportation, about bonds. How do we spend the $87 billion in the budget? That’s a leadership question. And so, while both my opponent and I have had individual pieces of legislation that have made a difference, I think I’ve concentrated much more on statewide issues that impact both my district and the state, but also participated in crafting larger reforms that are not just about my own bills.

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Q: What is an example of the larger reforms or areas?

A: HMO reform. There were 75 bills brought in the Assembly and the Senate, each of which had a piece of some form of HMO reform. The governor said unequivocally, “I don’t want to see all those bills. I want you to craft a package.” We [Kuehl, chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Martin Gallegos (D-Baldwin Park), chair of the Health Committee] ended up negotiating the entire HMO reform package with the governor. I was co-authoring one of the bills that allows you to sue your HMOs if they fail to provide the care they contracted for. All the other bills were other people’s bills. But leadership requires that you package the agenda in a way that you get something done in a coherent fashion.

It’s the same with the environment. We were crafting the park bond [the $2.1-billion measure on the March ballot], which affects the whole state. I got $30 million in the bond for the Santa Monica Mountains. I got $25 million in the bond to clean up Santa Monica Bay. But in addition, we crafted a much larger package that had to do with including urban parks and wilderness acquisition.

There’s also a difference in terms of ability to impact the budget. I got $1 million to finish the [Agoura Hills/Calabasas] community center. Being in leadership gives you much more access to just being at the table. In the middle of the night, when the final decisions are made, I’m there. It’s been the trust of the speaker in me, but also, I think, a little volunteering, a little more aggressive behavior for my district and for other constituencies: children who aren’t getting their child support, patients who aren’t getting cared for. I think it makes you more effective in the long run to have a relationship with the executive branch. I had a bill to establish nurse-to-patient staffing ratios in every hospital. It got through, and it was partly because, at the 11th hour, I could still get to the governor and say, “Let me make just one more argument as to why you shouldn’t veto this bill.”

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Q: What are the big issues coming up that you would focus on in the state Senate, if you are elected?

A: I would continue to be one of the strongest spokespeople in terms of social justice, anti-discrimination work, protection of families and children, against violence, against harassment, etc. Sometimes you carve out a place for yourself and then people start to rely on you for it. But in addition, there are three main areas that I would focus on. One, K-14 education, in terms of funding issues. There’s an enormous tug-of-war between the Legislature telling school districts, “Here’s a dollar and here’s how you spend it,” or, “Here’s an extra dollar; you decide how to spend it.” I want to focus on quality of education: Do the kids have sufficient supplies? Can’t we have more arts and music to balance off this very strict math and English-only stuff that they’re doing? The second main area has to do with the nexus between housing and transportation. I’m bringing a bill this year to require that before any local jurisdiction approves a new development of 200 units or more, they will have to find that the water district has assured them that there will be adequate water, even in drought circumstances. . . . The interplay of resources--access by transportation and affordable housing--is really going to be a tough nut to crack. . . . If we continue to rely just on individual transportation, we cannot possibly expand the freeways sufficiently to take care of the problem. We are going to have to do light rail or articulated buses, and there has been a Gordian knot on that issue that no one has untied. The third area is going to be health care. We have not finished, yet, with accessibility, portability, affordability. I would like to expand the state’s funding for those who can’t afford their health care, for the uninsured, but not keep putting the burden on business, small business. The only way we provide health care now, for most people, is if your employer provides it. That seems to me just unconscionable. The state has never picked up its fair share of trying to get closer to universal health care.

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Q: One of the big issues in transportation is Ventura Freeway gridlock. What can the state do?

A: There are three things the state can do. One is to make certain that everything is done in terms of the area that we already own, to have as may lanes as possible on the 101. Then there need to be more offramps and onramps. The second thing the state should do is to participate as much as possible in gaining federal funding and augmenting it with state funding for alternatives--light rail, articulated buses, the experiment that we’re now engaging in to extend the Red Line through quick buses. The third thing the state can do is related to sprawl. One of the reasons for my water bill was not only that I think we’re eventually going to have to worry about how much water we have, but also that there has to be a more thoughtful approach to immense developments and their impact on the traffic infrastructure. I have not been a fan at all of the Ahmanson [Ranch] development. I think that in-fill, where we already have services available, is better than just loading up another section of the freeway from the western end, and saying, “Oh well, we’re going to build it and they will go somewhere.”

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Q:. Where do you stand on term limits? Now that we’re into this, do we need to backtrack?

A: I think term limits dis-serves the people of California. . . . However, I’m not sure that anything will ever come from the Legislature on this. It would probably have to be done by initiative again.

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Q: Your opponent has had a strong stand on gun control issues. Where do you stand?

A: I’ve been 100% on gun control. I’ve been a coauthor on all of the gun control bills.

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Q: Is there anything else that we didn’t ask that you would like to comment on or say?

A: Another issue that’s heating up has to do with privacy as an aspect of consumer issues. There’s a uniform act on software privacy that the software manufacturers are trying to get through. They will never get that past my Judiciary Committee, because it really undermines consumer rights.

The other is this new financial services bill that the feds passed. They just issued regulations saying that your bank can share all your personal information with their new subsidiaries, life insurance companies, whatever, but if they’re going to sell it to some third party, they need to give you an opportunity to object. I have a bill that goes the other way, that is, if they’re going to sell or give away your information, even to subsidiaries, they have to ask for your permission and you have to affirmatively give it, or they can’t do it, and there are penalties.

I have another bill to bar mandatory arbitration provisions in health care contracts. The bill says you can choose arbitration, but you have to choose; it can’t be an automatic part of your health care contract.

I’ve been a passionate and energetic advocate for social justice. With 53 bills, you figure there’s a bunch in there that do a lot of different things: storm water runoff permitting, ways to keep the ocean clean, after-school programs for at-risk youth, domestic violence shelters. But my almost-lifelong experience in working on issues of equality, of which I’m very proud, is a career I’d like to continue. The impact that you can have on people’s lives, as a member of the state government, especially one of 40 people running one-seventh of the country, is an awesome responsibility, but it’s also an incredible opportunity to do good. I would hope that I get to do it.