Jim Nielsen as a Keynote Speaker at the APAPA headquarters
been taken, in combination with cuts that could still be taken, along some structural reforms that will help us in the long run and with additional revenue, I believe there is a pathway to a balanced budget.
Can you elaborate how this pathway to a balanced budget can occur? One thing that is not on this pathway, that I didn't mention, is the Governor's public safety realignment plan. His plan will put more than one hundred thousand un-rehabilitated parolees and inmates who would otherwise be in prison or supervised, into our local communities as recently as this time next year. As to the path, I suggest that the Governor sit down and negotiate with us on some things. What are their priorities that are really important to him? I think its education. In addition, the case loads in a lot of the social welfare programs will be jumping up. We definitely need to examine what drove
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those caseloads up and what we can do to slow them down in the long run. That may mean doing some things differently. One of the programs that is very dear to me is Cal-Works. I am the father of the predecessor to Cal-Works, the GAIN program, one of the most significant welfare reform programs in the history of the United States. GAIN later morphed into Cal-Works, which is very positive, but there are some things that are not working so well and instead of just funding it, we need to change it. So, my pathway is the Governor, the legislative leaders and its members sit down and have some constructive discussions.
What programs specifically need to be cut, or in what areas do you feel money is currently being wasted, to help balance the California budget? Well, obviously a lot in Corrections: I am an expert in this are because for fifteen years I was the head of the
California Board of Prison Terms. Those reductions cannot happen overnight though—they need to happen over a number of years. Very substantial number of dollars can be achieved in savings in corrections by doing a number of things such as creating an HMO for inmate medicine and aggressive substantive litigation prevention. Fast class-action law suits cost our state billions of dollars and they need to be reduced. I have proposed specific proposals to that end, proposals that this legislature has rejected—good ideas that would save money from prisons that could be redirected to other purposes. These proposals need to go back on the table, and I will be putting them back during our negotiations. You have now been a State Senator and an Assembly Member, can you talk a little bit about the differences and similarities between the two parts of legislation? Well they consider the same
bills. Both houses have their merits: in the Assembly side having eighty members means you have a greater exchange of ideas and more differences of opinion than you would in on the Senate side which only has forty Senators. The amount of members does have some telling impact on the institutions, also some traditions of the houses are a little bit different. You don't have as many members on the Senate committees and there is something called senatorial respect. Senatorial respect is how you speak and treat each other and the institutions, those traditions have changed a little bit over time in both institutions. It used to be and still is to some degree that Senators are generally older and have more life experience and that has an impact. However, both houses do have to work together and have to reach resolutions on bills, budgets and policy issues. This is needed so that enough votes are gathered in both houses to put legislation on the Governor's desk. Russian Time Magazine ::
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