‘A Very Clear Vision’ for State

When Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger takes office, he’ll begin with a ready-made yardstick to measure his performance.

In speeches and interviews, in his one debate and in written comments made during the two-month campaign, Schwarzenegger promised action on a wide range of issues facing the state and sometimes set specific time goals.

Generally withholding detail as to how he would reach his goals, Schwarzenegger, in effect, asked to be trusted and to be judged by the results.

On its face, his program appears contradictory: He has said he would cut taxes and increase certain services, while identifying no corresponding services he would cut. He said he would make up the difference by streamlining the state bureaucracy to save money and improving the business climate to generate more tax revenue.

Schwarzenegger also has articulated a more subjective goal that will be harder to evaluate.

“I have a very clear vision of a better California, of a California the way it used to be, when people came here and enjoyed working hard, and making a living and this was like the land of opportunity in California and ... I want that to come back like that,” he said in an ABC interview with Peter Jennings earlier this month. “That’s my vision, and I will get here because I see it very clearly.”

Opponents have said that he promised more than he, or anyone, could deliver.

The first milestone on Schwarzenegger’s course will be the requirement to produce a budget in January for the 2004-05 fiscal year. Even before then, his own schedule calls for much to be done. He has promised to rescind about $4 billion in vehicle license fees on his first day in office and to start work immediately on a state budget spending cap.

He said he would call a special session of the Legislature upon taking office and, if the Legislature doesn’t adopt his proposals, has promised to start the process to take them to the voters as initiatives.

Here are some of the governor-elect’s key statements putting forward his agenda:

Taxes

“I believe that not only should we not raise tax rates on anyone in California, but we have to reduce taxes that make our state uncompetitive,” Schwarzenegger wrote in a Sept. 24 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Broad opposition to taxes was a central theme in his campaign.

“I feel that the people of California have been punished enough. From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they are taxed,” he said at an Aug. 20 news conference unveiling his economic plan. “Then they go and get a coffee, they are taxed. They get into their car, they are taxed. They go to the gas station, they are taxed. They go for lunch and they are taxed and [it] goes on all day long, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. So even when they go to bed, you can really go into the bed and fear that you maybe get taxed while you are sleeping. There’s a sleeping tax. This is crazy. This is what this state does and this is why so many businesses have left.”

Among all those taxes, he has named only one he would reduce.

“I will repeal the car tax increase immediately upon taking office,” he said in a written response to a Times questionnaire published Sept. 28. “The car tax hurts working Californians. The tax is harsh and regressive. I will replace these revenues and eliminate the operating deficit by reducing wasteful spending and bringing jobs back to California.”

The day after the election, state Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) challenged the governor’s constitutional authority to repeal the vehicle license fee, which was triggered by a formula written into legislation.

But in his first news conference Wednesday, Schwarzenegger was confident he could follow through on his promise.

“I have my legal advisors now working on that so we can figure out how to do that,” he said. “Because as you know there is a debate over can it be done, the first day or not. My advisors say it can.”

As part of a 10-point, 100-day plan he unveiled the week before the election, Schwarzenegger said he would call the Legislature into special session to tackle next year’s budget.

On Wednesday he reaffirmed his pledge not to increase taxes.

“I campaigned that I would not raise taxes, and I say this again that I will not raise taxes,” he said.

Still, in the past, he has outlined two possible exceptions.

“Because we can have, you know, next year an earthquake,” he said. “We can have a natural disaster. We could have a terrorist attack or something like that. So we can never say never, no.”

Spending

“I promise you as governor I will not spend more money than the state takes in,” Schwarzenegger told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on Sept. 10.

He explained the plan with a dieting analogy.

“When I’m overweight, what do I do immediately?” he said. “I stop eating food. I’m not going to go and supply myself with more food. The only way you reduce weight is by stop feeding the food. And we cannot continue feeding the government with money. We have to make them disciplined. Live off the money that we have.”

At his Aug. 20 news conference announcing an economic plan, he said he would appoint a committee to audit the state’s books. He said he expects it to turn up billions of dollars of waste to cut.

“What you have to do is, and what I have to do when I go into office, is have an audit, like I said, a 60-day audit with an independent company to really look at that,” he said.

A few days later, he shortened the schedule.

“First of all, I don’t think it would take that long,” he told O’Reilly. “I think it would take a month to really figure out what’s going on.”

But three days before the election, Schwarzenegger outlined a more expansive plan with a much longer time frame. In the Jennings interview he said that “easy solutions, fast solutions, are not always the good solutions.”

“You have to take your time,” he said. “This problem was created over a period of years, and it would take months and months and months to start working on it and really solving some of the problems. The first thing that you have to do is open up the books. Let the people see the waste that’s going on in there. And the second thing you have to do is put a spending cap on it. Say, ‘Stop spending.’ There’s no signing of new programs and bills or anything like this. Let’s just stop right now. We only have this much money. Let’s redo the current operating deficit. Let’s work on that, and then slowly start thinking about the inherited debt.”

Schwarzenegger’s newly appointed auditor, Donna Arduin, said Thursday that she expected to complete her review in time for the January budget, which needs go to the printer in late December. For the long term, Schwarzenegger wrote in the Wall Street Journal, he would appoint an advisory group to develop a spending limit law.

“We need to put teeth into a spending limit law through a constitutional amendment that caps state budget growth,” he said.

Revenue

Schwarzenegger has said that he expects to offset spending cuts with new revenue from several sources.

One of his repeated themes is getting more money from the federal government.

“We have to go to the federal government and say, ‘Wait a minute, we are paying. For each dollar we pay you in federal taxes, we only get back 77 cents.’ ” he said on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor.” “I will be going there and I will be collecting money for the state. I would demand that. By the time I’m through with this whole thing, I will not be known as the Terminator; I will be known as the ‘Collectinator.’ ”

In a Sept. 24 interview with Aaron Brown on CNN, Schwarzenegger set a specific target.

“There’s billions of dollars, more than $50 billion, they are not giving us,” he said.

He also expects to bring in $2 billion more in Indian gambling receipts.

“I will demand California’s fair share of billions of dollars of Indian gambling revenue,” he said in unveiling his 100-day plan. “I will renegotiate the Indian gaming agreements. We will be fair to both the tribes and the California people.”

Gov. Gray Davis made a more modest proposal in his January budget, but the tribes, which have sovereign status, rebuffed him. To such objections, Schwarzenegger said he would succeed where others failed by exercising leadership.

Schwarzenegger speaks frequently about bringing in new revenue by stimulating business.

“And what I want to do is bring the jobs and the businesses back here, creating a positive business environment so that people want to do business here, and then also to really stimulate the businesses and encourage people with incentives, with tax incentives, to start small businesses again,” he told Jennings.

Education

Schwarzenegger has stated ambitious goals to correct inequality in the state’s schools and get more money into the classroom.

“We have to make sure that we have, for instance, the best teachers in the inner-city schools where there is a lot of problems,” he told Jennings. “We have to make sure that we have equal education. Right now in California we don’t have equal education for all students. The inner-city schools have a problem. The other schools, the more affluent schools, they are doing well. The inner-city schools don’t have the books many times. They don’t have the homework material all the time.”

He has promised to protect the funding of education required under Proposition 98, but would not commit to any overall increases.

“It’s nothing to do that much with money,” he said when pressed by Jennings. “It has to do with streamlining it and letting the local officials make the decisions, that they know best what they need to do in the local level. Sacramento doesn’t know what is best.”

His solution: “Make it more efficient. See where the mistakes are. See where the waste is and then rechannel it and make sure that it goes into the classroom. Right now, for instance ... for every dollar that we are putting into education, only 40 cents goes into the classroom. We have to change that.”

He said he would continue the state’s standardized testing program.

“Tests that are aligned with academic content standards are an essential tool for teachers, parents, administrators and state policymakers,” he wrote in response to The Times’ questionnaire. “They will help to raise student achievement across the board. There is no point having standards unless we test to determine if all students are meeting them.”

Schwarzenegger said he would encourage the charter school movement.

“I support lifting the cap on charter schools, cutting the burdensome regulations recently imposed on charter schools, and working to make sure charter schools are not shortchanged,” he said on The Times’ questionnaire. “I want to see more charter schools in California, more families to have access to schools that are helping students achieve.”

On higher education, Schwarzenegger has deplored tuition increases, but stopped short of calling for a reduction.

“The fee increase.... What message does this send to our students?” he asked Brown on CNN. “What message does it send to the parents of the students? We want to promote education. We want to promote higher education. And what I would do is that if they need an increase, it should be a gradual increase, a cost-of-living increase or something like that, so we don’t have to hit the students or the parents with that one shot.”

Health Care

In one of his most dramatic campaign promises, Schwarzenegger called for the extension of health coverage to all California children, a program expansion that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We have to make sure that every child in California is insured,” he said during the Sept. 24 debate. “That is the most important thing. I’m very passionate about children’s issues. It is very important because they cannot fend for themselves. The children, we have a healthy family program here in California, and it is a very, very good program. The only problem with the program right now is that ... the government has not done a good job in reaching out and finding the people and letting them know to sign up and find easy ways for them to sign up. Two-thirds of the people that are eligible do not have the child care. It is really terrible. If I become governor, l would immediately go out there and get it out so everyone knows about it and everyone signs up because we must insure our families, the low-income families, especially the children.”

He gave no specifics on how the program expansion would be funded, but again suggested that he would eliminate inefficiency.

“We need to get rid of costly mandates that make health insurance costs prohibitive,” he said in a written response to The Times.

“In Medi-Cal alone there is billions of dollars of waste,” he said on ABC.

He opposes legislation that has required small businesses to shoulder a larger part of insurance costs.

“Government may be part of the solution in the future, but with our current financial situation, now is not the time to impose a costly new mandate on business,” he said in the written answer. “Businesses are already faced with choosing between paying workers’ comp premiums and shutting their doors. We simply can’t afford to add another tax, another mandate on business, not until we get California working again.”

Environment

Though not emphasizing environmental issues, Schwarzenegger made several commitments during the campaign, starting with the promise to convert his gas-guzzling Hummer to clean-burning hydrogen power.

“What I want to do is I want to show them my car when it’s done and inspire Detroit and let them know that this is what we can do, get going right now,” he told the Associated Press.

His campaign said the upgrade would cost $21,000 and take one to two months.

As part of his message to automakers, Schwarzenegger also promised to sign an executive order to create a network of hydrogen fueling stations up the coast by 2010.

Describing himself as an environmentalist, he also said he would prevent coastal oil drilling, seek to reduce energy consumption by 20% within two years and protect parks and open spaces.

“California’s coast is recognized worldwide as one of our most precious resources, and it must be protected,” he said in response to a Times’ questionnaire.

He said the federal government should buy up offshore oil leases as it did in Florida.

Unlike fellow Republican candidate state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), Schwarzenegger did not suggest scrapping the Coastal Commission, but said he would make it more independent.

He also said he would defend California’s legislation to reduce greenhouse gases from a court challenge.

At one point, Schwarzenegger implied that California’s Environmental Protection Agency was not needed.

“What you just talked about is the waste -- overlapping agencies,” he said in response to a question at a Sept. 29 “Ask Arnold” event in a Fresno suburb.

“They cost a fortune. We have to strip that down and get rid of some of those agencies.”

Later, aides said Schwarzenegger did not mean that he intended to scrap Cal/EPA.

Labor

Schwarzenegger has classified the state employee unions as one of the special interests that exert undue influence on state government.

In his 100-day plan, he included renegotiating those unions’ contracts.

Asked whether he thought the unions would cooperate, he said, “contract renegotiation may be preferable to layoffs.”

At other times, he has also indicated that he intends to reduce the state payroll, with or without new contracts. “We have so many government employees,” he told Jennings. “You can make a billion dollars right there.”

Despite his conservative stance on unions, Schwarzenegger has expressed a general concern about social inequality.

“The people have to have the same right for work and the same kind of opportunities,” he said during the Sept. 24 debate. “Right now, for instance, we have a 6.6% unemployment rate in California. We have an increase of unemployment amongst women, 25%, among Hispanics, 20% and amongst African Americans, 45%.”

He did not propose a way to change those numbers.

Workers’ Compensation

Schwarzenegger has vowed to reduce workers’ compensation costs and increase benefits.

“I will call a special session of the Legislature to enact reforms to correct a system that imposes unaffordable costs on our employers, while denying decent benefits to injured workers,” he said.

“I will not sign a budget without workers’ compensation reform,” he said.

He has criticized as inadequate the reform law recently signed by Davis that was projected to save businesses and insurers about $4 billion. His own proposals remain general. He has suggested that savings can be achieved by eliminating fraud.

At the same time, he has suggested that workers’ compensation benefits are too stingy in some cases.

“So we have to just create reform in order to help our business,” he said. “And also to help the people that are injured because their benefits are not really adequate either. Many times, people are getting benefits that are wrong.”

Immigration

Although the governor has no direct role in U.S. immigration policy, Schwarzenegger has articulated a complex view of immigration as it affects California.

He said he would repeal the law recently signed by Davis allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

“I will not let California’s drivers’ licenses be turned into fraudulent documents,” he said during his Oct. 1 news conference. “I will give the legislators one last chance to repeal [it], and if they don’t, I will take it directly to the people.”

Schwarzenegger has said he favors a temporary worker program.

“I oppose second-class identification for undocumented immigrants but support a properly regulated temporary worker visa program,” he said in a written response to a question from The Times.

He said he does not favor denying illegal immigrants access to public education and health-care benefits, two proposals endorsed by California voters in 1994 when they approved Proposition 187 but largely thrown out in court. “I want to stay with the law,” he told CNN’s Larry King. “I want to continue the way it is done right now, where people get services.”

But he supports a regional effort to crack down on illegal border crossings.

“Well, the first thing I would like to do is, is when I become governor, work together with other governors of neighboring states and of states that are next to Mexico to really work on those problems,” he told O’Reilly.

“I am absolutely convinced that we can work together with the federal government and slow down the flow of illegal immigrants.”

Special Interests

One of the key components of Schwarzenegger’s campaign has been his vow to shun special interests.

As part of his 10-point plan, he said he would pass an open-government amendment and ban fund-raising during the budget process. Lawmakers would be banned from raising money between January, when the governor presents a budget, and the summer, when the fiscal plan is normally enacted.

Among Schwarzenegger’s earliest pronouncements was an Aug. 5 televised boast that, “I am rich enough that I don’t have to take anyone’s money.”

He has blasted Davis for selling out to special interests.

“It is now an environment in Sacramento where the politicians to a large extent are representing the special interest rather than representing the people.”

A few days later, when Schwarzenegger began reporting large contributions from donors such as Van Nuys car dealer Howard Keyes, Newport Beach home builder William Lyons and real estate giant Alex Spanos, the candidate and his staff narrowed their definition of special interests.

Schwarzenegger told KTKZ radio in Sacramento that he shunned “any of those kinds of real big, powerful special interests; if you take money from them, you owe them something.”

He said it would be different with his donors, “corporations and companies that maybe the press identifies and says, ‘Well that is a big company; they want certain things,’ ” because, “I don’t promise anyone anything.”