Excerpts: ‘Year of Great Challenges’

Lt. Gov. McCarthy, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, members of the Legislature, constitutional officers and fellow Californians, thank you. . . .

Times are tough all over--truly tough. I’ve seen pain in the eyes of working people all over California--men and women proud of their skills and proud of their work, but no longer able to provide for their families.

I’ve watched the eyes of a gruff, gray-haired businessman grow wet as he spoke of having to lay off people who’d kept his small shop running for years.

I’ve seen worry in the face of a farm worker idled by a killer arctic freeze. I’ve seen worry among our own state employees, among entrepreneurs and aerospace workers.

Tough times demand compassion, realism and honesty.

We must have little patience with Pollyannas and even less with preachers of a California or national malaise.

So yes, 1992 promises to be a year of great challenges--but also a year of great rewards for a people and a state with the heart and purpose and direction not just to survive hard times, but to be ready for good times. Sir Francis Bacon put it quite well: “Adversity doth best discover virtue.”

Wilson on the Economy

We must do all we can to speed economic recovery--not just wait for it. True, the recession is worldwide and California can’t cure it by our actions alone. But with legislative authority to expedite $500 million worth of state construction projects, we can move months earlier and accelerate needed and already-approved projects. So before we do anything else, let’s put thousands of Californians back to work.

And let’s get moving on replacement and expansion of our infrastructure--the schools, the roads and the bridges we need to accommodate a California that is 30 million people and growing. I ask you to place on the June and November ballots $6 billion of new general obligation bonds, including $1.6 billion for school construction, and bonds for prisons, higher education, transit, water and sewer facilities.

If we are to save jobs, California must be competitive with other states and other nations, not an economic Atlas bound by red tape.

That’s why I appointed a Council on California’s Competitiveness, 17 distinguished leaders of California business and labor, chaired by Peter Ueberroth. Their charge is simple--find ways to remove the obstacles, the burdens, the delays and the costs that kill our jobs.

Regulations must not exist for their own sake. And they clearly transgress the bounds of reason when members of Estrella del Mar, a community of nuns in Los Angeles, are forced to wait in line 15 hours over three days to apply for a permit to operate a home for abused children. Mindless regulation is a never-ending hassle for charities. In the job world, it throws people out of work.

But an even more deadly job-killer is the archaic, fraud-ridden workers’ compensation system. It’s driving jobs out of California. It pays phony stress claims at an unaffordable cost to employers, but denies decent benefits to genuinely injured workers. It’s time for real reform--for major overhaul and not just tinkering.

I ask your cooperation in making reforms that--if made promptly--can breathe life back into California’s economy.

Wilson on Education

Nothing we do can have a more profound and lasting impact on California’s competitiveness than the quality of our schools. We must assure our kids the best break possible in an ever-shrinking and increasingly competitive global marketplace. We must invest heavily in their education.

That’s why, in the budget for the coming year, I propose to fully fund Proposition 98.

Specifically, I propose to fully fund enrollment growth to give a cost-of-living adjustment, and initiate important new educational programs. This amounts to a $1.8-billion increase for California’s public schools.

My budget also provides additional funds to expand summer school and buy more textbooks.

But to achieve our goals for California education, we must make basic reforms.

First, the Legislature should act without further delay to create the Child Development and Education Agency. Children need education and preventive care to achieve their full potential. To help them reach their potential, California needs a “Children’s Secretary.”

We need to support a volunteer program to free teachers to cope with overcrowded classrooms.

We must recruit volunteer mentors to be the caring adult whom every child needs.

If a parent can’t or won’t provide the guidance and discipline needed for the child’s development and self-esteem, then a mentor must or we risk losing that child.

The boys are at risk of becoming dropouts, gang members and gang victims, or part of a swelling prison population. The girls are at risk of becoming dropouts, pregnant and the drug-addicted mothers of innocently addicted and tormented babies. Mentors can prevent these tragedies.

Knowledge is meant to be shared. We should recognize and assist employers, like Rockwell International, who encourage alternative credentialing of their retirees and employees.

The best teachers deserve the best pay. It is not beyond us to devise a measure of teacher performance that is objective and fair. Kids get graded, so can teachers. So I ask the Legislature to approve merit pay for teachers who excel.

And the best schools deserve to be recognized by parents as the best choice for their kids. Competition brings improvement, whether it is between students, teachers or schools. So I ask the Senate to approve the school choice legislation now pending before you.

Wilson on Health Care

I propose a children’s health insurance program to promote access to basic health care services for all uninsured California preschoolers. This program will provide primary and preventive out-patient services to promote good health and minimize injury and illness. I call it CheckUp.

Through a public-private partnership, it will ensure coverage for California’s children, from birth through age 5, with preventive and primary care, with physician and clinic services, with prescription drugs, dental services and vision care. State subsidies for premiums on a sliding scale will assure help to the poorest children.

Even kids who are eligible for Medi-Cal often have difficulty getting access to these critical services. So we’re going to devote funds to improve access to primary and preventive care for these preschoolers too.

The unhappy irony is that even as we spend more money on children, we can’t keep pace with their increase. We face the threat of having to spend less on each child. Even more ominous--as we add more than 200,000 children to school enrollments each year--is the growing competition for funds between education and public assistance.

Welfare is one of the fastest-growing programs in our state budget--growing at almost 12% per year--four times the rate of California’s population growth. Seven percent of our present recipients did not live in California one year before going on welfare.

Incredibly, California, with only 12% of the nation’s population, bears the burden of 26% of the nation’s total welfare spending by all the states.

Runaway spending is unfair to California taxpayers. And it’s not fair to job-seekers--or to the working men and women of California--the breadwinners. Their jobs are threatened--threatened by a continuing exodus of employers fleeing both the present burden of high taxes, and the ever-present threat that autopilot spending by the state will make that tax burden even heavier.

But most importantly, the status quo is not fair to the children of California--children who are at risk of having state spending for education and preventive programs crowded out by state spending for public assistance. The people should know that a competition perilous to education is under way.

Wilson on Crime

In this time of budgetary restraint, we will be forced to cut many worthy programs. But one thing we will not do: We will not indulge in the false and foolhardy economy of releasing dangerous criminals.

To the contrary, the people of California deserve to be protected against them by prison terms that match the seriousness of their crimes and the threat they pose to society.

So I propose a reduction in the credits that now cut in half sentences served by even the most violent felons. The fact that a convicted rapist, drug dealer or armed robber has done a good job in the prison laundry does not render him a safe bet to return to society.

Women have lived in fear for too long in this state. One reason is that in California convicted rapists serve an average of four years, and can serve as little as 18 months. So I propose a sentence of 18 years to life for the worst sexual predators. Rapists should count their sentences not in months, but in years.

Drugs remain a terrible menace. So we must reduce demand by preventive education. And, to take the profit out of drug dealing, we must increase the risk and cost of conviction to the dealer.

So let’s throw the book at dealers who sell drugs to children. Let’s lower the amount of drugs sold that is required to add to the sentence served by the dealer. And in the name of common decency, let’s lock up for good the dealer who knowingly sells drugs to pregnant women.

And let’s allow persons closest to a murder victim to make a Victim’s Impact Statement. Let them testify during the penalty phase of a death penalty case. Victims’ families are in pain. Let their grief be heard.

Turning from the human to the physical environment, it’s clearly time to apply the preventive approach to managing the use of our water for the long term. We need new long-term policies that require conservation, encourage water marketing as well as new facilities south of the delta. We need measures to protect fisheries and wildlife habitat, as well as rural and municipal uses. To meet these needs, Secretary Wheeler’s Water Policy Task Force has been at work upon specific recommendations for a year. Shortly I will propose a comprehensive state water plan based on the work of the task force.

It will reflect the same kind of consensus between competing water users that we have achieved in seeking an end to California’s timber wars. We will end those wars by enacting an historic accord reached by responsible representatives of the timber industry and responsible environmental advocates and responsible legislators, to whom I express my gratitude--a grand accord, to save our jobs and save our old-growth forests.

Together, there is much we can do to enhance our natural heritage. Join me in passing the Resourceful California Bond Initiative to preserve forests, to maintain parks and to protect natural habitats.

Join me in passing legislation and regulation to streamline the environmental permit processing in California. Delay adds nothing to the environment, but adds price to the product and unfairly subtracts jobs from our economy.

And finally, join me in planning a new blueprint to manage California’s growth and California’s future.

The state of our state is good--and can be much better . . . if California makes important changes.

The good news is that the changes California needs are fully within our power to make.