League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
San Diego County, CA March 2, 2004 Election
	Ralph Denney Answers Questions Candidate for State Senator; District 39; Republican Party

Read the answers from all candidates.

Questions & Answers

1. What does California need to do to address the current budget crisis?

New and higher taxes are not the answer. Californians already pay among the highest taxes in the nation, while they receive the lowest services. First and foremost, we must break the hold of the special interest groups who are bankrupting our state for their own financial gains.

We must accept nothing less than long term solutions instead of the short term `fixes' our legislature has so far burdened us with. We must bring about true reform not only in the budget itself, but especially in the costly duplication of confusing and convoluted regulations which waste precious resources while failing to do what they are intended to do... protect Californians while allowing businesses to complete in an ever more competitive world market.

We can no longer accept less than band-aides on the problem of workman's compensation where our employers received on average less than three percent reductions in premiums which in the last two years have grown by more than 300%. Again, California businesses pay the highest premiums in the nation while California workers receive the third lowest benefits...

We must regain control of the state agencies which have become convinced their primary function is to justify and expand their own budgets instead of serving the public and completing the mandate set by our elected officials.

We must return our government back to it's core responsibilities... Public Education... Public Safety... and Public Health... We must understand that all other programs are doomed to failure as long as these core areas remain neglected.

2. What should the state's priorities be for K-12 education? For the Community College System?

Public education has too long been treated as the orphaned step-child of a neglectful state government. We must understand that we cannot hope to win the war against drugs or gang violence... interrupt the cycle of poverty and institutionalized welfare... or bring about the end of intolerance and hatred until we bring about true reform in Public Education and safeguard its future funding.

We can no longer afford to spend less on per student instructional expenses than other states... most industrialized nations... even less than the Northern Marianas Islands... We also must insure our educational dollars are spent where they are needed... in the schools. We cannot allow 39 cents out of every educational dollar be spent on non-instructional expenses. We must put reasonable caps on so-called administrative expenses which deny our teachers the tools they need to teach their charges the skills they will need to succeed in our increasingly complex society.

Although we certainly need to improve student scores in basic reading and math skills, we cannot fall into the trap of not providing the well-rounded education every child will need as he or she enters the real world.

3. What measures would you support to address California's water needs?

First, we must understand that California does not have a water shortage problem... Southern California does... and Southern Californians must do their part to solve the problem instead of demanding solutions from Sacramento and Washington. We must conserve water where we can. Develop inexpensive desalination and recycling technologies while Sacramento encourages conservation by + among other things + planting native water saving foliage along our freeways and byways. We must end the wasteful practice of flood irrigation while finding ways to encourage alternative... and more effective methods of irrigating the farms and ranches of the Imperial/Coachella and Central valleys. It is a complex and difficult problem... again, we must work for long-term solutions and no longer accept short-term `fixes'.

4. What should the Legislature be doing to address the needs of Californians without health insurance?

First, we must address the NATIONAL need for affordable health care. No one state can afford to solve this problem, and we need to demand of our elected Federal officials to finally come to grips with the need for a national health care program.

In the mean time, again we must look to long-term solutions and reform in our public health delivery system. We must stop trying to save money in the short-term by eliminating important well-baby and child heath care which ultimately only defers... and magnifies the eventual costs. We must re-establish a system of less expensive public heath clinics to provide basic health care and treatment instead of forcing our underprivileged and working poor to inundate far more expensive emergency rooms.

As I stated in my answer to the first question, we must attack the root causes forcing our employers to abandon health coverage for their employees and their families, or abandoning our state entirely. We can best do this by reducing the myriad confusing and convoluted regulations which hamstring our health system, and as with workman's compensation, we must eliminate the dirge of baseless and outrageous lawsuits, which together drive up the costs of providing such coverage. We must have real tort reform...

Finally... by returning to the core responsibilities of Public Education... Public Safety... and Public Health. By understanding that a well educated society is by its nature a safer society, and that a safe society puts a far less strain on our public health system...