Candidate for
State Senator; District 10; Democratic Party

To fix education, we need to narrow the achievement gap. My mission in the state Senate will be to use my 23 years of state budget and finance experience to achieve excellence in California schools. As Chair of the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee, we calculated the effect that the bills before our committee would have on Proposition 98. Last year alone, I stopped over $800 million in tax breaks from getting out of my committee in order to protect Proposition 98 monies for our schools. To fully fund education, we need to look at rolling back some of the tax breaks the Legislature has passed in the past 10 years totaling around $6.9 billion each year.

I'm deeply concerned about protecting individual pensions from the increasing problem of corporate bankruptcies. I've introduced legislation this year that would prevent California companies from declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying out their employee pensions. I believe that people who work hard and pay into a pension fund throughout their working years should be able to rely on the retirement they've earned.

This year, I was proud to introduce a windfall profits tax on the oil companies who are gouging us at the pump. My bill would impose a 2% surtax on the oil companies when they declare record profits. The money raised from the tax would fund a prescription drugs tax credit for seniors. It's time to make Big Oil pay its fair share.

Cleaning up the Bay is one of my local priorities, as there are many streams and creeks in the district, and it's critical that we control the pollutants that may run off into the Bay. In my current term in the Assembly, I authored AB 2444, a bill that would add a $5 annual fee to the VLF in Alameda County for environmental mitigation projects, such as storm water runoff projects to protect the Bay, and another $5 annually for traffic congestion management. We're simply not getting our share of state transportation funds and need this money locally for stalled projects and to protect the environment.

As our population grows to 50 million people in the next 13 years, we face many challenges in the ability of our existing infrastructure to handle the increases in population.

If we continue to build in rural areas of California, our farmlands will be gone in 65 years. California needs to make environmental mitigation a priority. We need to encourage smart growth that creates housing and retail centers along transit corridors and attracts in-fill rather than sprawl. We should support intermodal transportation from baby bullet trains to light rail and BART to bus and shuttle and car pools. We have to change habits, and building communities of the future around mass transit can help us do that.

At the same time, it's getting more and more difficult for the average family of four with two working parents to afford a home, healthcare insurance and a quality education for their children. I'm very concerned, so I co-authored AB 48 (Lieber) and AB 1835 (Lieber) to raise the state's minimum wage to help working families. In addition, we need to fix this problem by investing in education, health, and job opportunities.

To address our healthcare crisis, I co-authored SB 840 (Kuehl), The California Health Insurance Reliability Act, to guarantee comprehensive health benefits for every citizen in California. The legislation would have replaced the current system of public and private insurance plans with a state-run plan that would cover all California residents.

As housing prices continue to rise, owning a home is increasingly becoming out of reach for the average working family. I'm committed to working towards a solution to this issue. To this end, I was the author of the Affordable Housing Tax Credit of 1987, which resulted in thousands of affordable housing units for working families.