Gloria Romero

State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, is none too impressed with the governor. While she touts her party’s ability to compromise with him, she finds fault with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s leadership, appointments, and policies. She even suggests that the bodybuilder-politician doesn’t “have any muscle to deliver votes from his own party.” As the legislature’s most powerful woman, she knows the irony of leveling that insult towards a governer prone to using the vaguely sexist perjorative, “girly-men.”

But the liberal Democrat has more than just criticism for her Republican executive counterpart; she also has ideas for fixing the state’s massive budget deficit. Romero built her reputation on reforming California’s opulent and inefficient prison system while trying to allocate funds to urban schools and higher education, so she’s keenly aware that, when making budgetary priorities, flushing one government program with cash means bankrupting another. Working in the Democratic tradition, she’s also been a legislative ally of government transparency, introducing one bill to make police misconduct investigations public, and another to allow journalists to investigate prisons in greater depth. The former got held up in committee and the latter was vetoed, but she still hopes to see more sunshine through state and local governments.

After a meeting on social and economic issues with Latino leaders, grassroots activists, and Senator Barack Obama (whom she supports adamantly in the presidential race), Romero spoke with CityBeat about health care reform, her L.A. County district’s issues, and her beefs with the governor – while not for a moment ignoring the budget’s looming shadow.

–Greg Katz

CityBeat: What’s in the future for the state budget?

Gloria Romero: The budget deficit will frame the debate for the next year. That is unfortunate, but the reality of the situation is, California is looking potentially at a $10 billlion deficit. I think that it offers an opportunity, if the governor takes it – and thus far he has not – to address structural issues in the budget. You may recall that it was the governor who campaigned and got into office by repealing the vehicle license fee – the “car tax,” as it was called. To some extent, we’re looking at $5 billion of this coming from that one elimination of the vehicle license fee.

The governor has talked about putting away and eliminating the credit cards; clearly he has not. We’re going to look forward to receiving the governor’s budget [in January]. We as Democrats stand ready to work with this governor, but we want to see his leadership, as far as what his plans are to balance a budget that will be good for California and to invest in California.

What’s next for health care at the state level?

The governor made a big deal out of it back in January: “It’s the year of health care reform.” It’s December and he has not come up with a plan. Then there’s a partial plan that basically says we can put words on a piece of paper, try to pass it as a bill. But the funding mechanism that is really the main issue, he doesn’t want to put into bill language, but rather to bring that forth as an initiative for the people to vote on. That’s not very strong leadership.

As Democrats, we have stood there with this governor on more votes than his own party. Unless the governor can deliver his own party – one vote! Two votes! – we can’t get anything done because of the two-thirds vote mandate.

What should future health care legislation look like?

I’m a strong supporter of single-payer, universal health care coverage. That’s a bill authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl, and I’m a co-author on that bill. There are a number of us who are co-authors. The governor has indicated he will not sign the bill.

If you look at public opinion polls, an increased plurality of voters support universal health care coverage. We’ll see whether or not this governor can deliver on health care, but if not, we might just have to wait for the next governor, who might have the courage, the leadership, and the vision to bring forth a single-payer health care plan for California.

Would that even be possible, in light of the budget problems?

We don’t see it that way. Remember: look at how much people are paying now, what the premiums are. To a large extent it’s insurance companies that are pocketing the money. In fact, we think when you start to eliminate the insurance companies, where do the dollars go? They go directly to the patient. Ultimately, we do believe it’s a more efficient system, but any time you try to take out a significant power plant, there’s going to be a fight, and that’s why, right now at least, this governor’s not willing to fight [insurance companies].

L.A. politicians often complain they don’t get enough state support for infrastructural programs, particularly transit. Will the state be able to help gridlock here in light of the budget?

The entire state of California is injured by the budget situation. You know, California right now is the eighth-largest economy in the world, and one thing that has severely hit California as well is the meltdown of the mortgage sub-prime market, real estate, the decline of new construction. Whether or not a formal recession is declared, clearly we are feeling the impact in the coffers of California, in seeing the declining number of dollars that are in there to support a burgeoning population, 37 million people and growing.

I guess overall in looking at this, it’s going to be a bleak year. It’s a year in which we are not going to argue for, or see, the development of new programs. In fact, if anything, we’re probably going to be looking at how we tighten the belt around the programs we have seen and begin to eliminate some. It’s sad because, you know, the governor did proclaim [2008] to be the year of education.

The one area where California is spending more is in the area of our prisons and our correctional system. Clearly it’s dysfunctional when we find ourselves spending more today on the California prison system than on higher education. We’re spending more on prisons than on the University of California and the California State University combined. It’s absolutely incredible!

So you’d tell those who seek funding for L.A. transit projects from the state to look elsewhere?

We’ve got to continue to fight together, but it’s the state. The voters passed bonds. There’s a California Transportation Commission that the governor appoints. They, in their most recent allocation of dollars, didn’t exactly favor L.A. County.

We’re going to continue to advocate with the L.A. delegation, but remember, there are 58 delegations in the state, fighting for the same pot of money. L.A.’s strong, we got a good amount, [but] it’s not sufficient given the fact that over 40 percent of trade and goods movement comes through the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors and is moved through Southern California.

What other L.A. issues do you have your eye on?

One thing that I’m supporting – it’s not legislation per se, it’s a community movement – is cityhood for East Los Angeles. I’m working with numerous residents in the East Los Angeles area to bring that about.

How do you think Mayor Villaraigosa has been doing in his term so far?

I continue to support the mayor’s calls and leadership on school reform. I’m hopeful that the schools will vote to join the partnership with the mayor in looking at bringing about change in our schools. I think he continues to take the lead and exert excellent leadership when it comes to doing partnerships with communities in advancing school reform. Communities cannot be strong without strong schools. So I look forward to continuing to work with the mayor, to run legislation to support school reform effort, and to ensure that communities bond and work with parents and students in our district.

Are you going to try to revive SB 1019, your police transparency legislation?

Absolutely. The bill is sitting in the Assembly Public Safety Committee … and I would hope, I ask, I urge that the Assembly move the bill forward and give me the courtesy of a vote, at least.

What’s been holding it up?

You’d have to talk with Assembly members about that, but I’m disappointed. I think that to a large extent, there’s concern about the police lobby; it’s a very powerful lobby. To me though, it’s an issue that’s not negative to the police. I don’t think any police agency wants to have bad cops on their force.

I see this as being part of open government, transparency. We do not, in a democracy, believe in a secret police. Essentially, without restoring this after the Copley decision [in the state Supreme Court that lessened transparency], to a large extent, we end up with a secret police, which I believe injures the foundations of a strong democracy.