ADDITIONAL SPECIFIC PROPOSALS

By Cheryl Ann Bly-Chester

These are some additional specific proposals that evolved from considering solutions to various issues such as the car tax, education, energy and the environment, immigration, and "controlled-substance laws."

I would repeal the car tax and implement a more business friendly approach.

All vehicles registered to a business will receive the former tax.

The primary vehicle of each licensed driver will receive the former tax.

All other vehicles will be taxed at the new tripled rate.

EDUCATION

On education, California's education used to be the jewel in our crown. I will protect Educational Funding

K-12 Education

The problem is simple, the solution is more difficult. The problem is that not enough of educational funding is going to the intended recipient -- the classroom -- to benefit the students. When the educational system is also required to provide meals, transportation, security, public health programs, social services, language training, physical fitness, ad infinitum, the classroom suffers. The first step is to account for all the spending and root out waste, fraud and abuse. Funds intended for the classroom need to make it down the pipe to the classroom. Other steps would include revising the system so that teachers have a better chance of maintaining discipline. Also, no child should be promoted who is not proficient in the class material.

Community Colleges

Prop 98 funding was voted in to ensure free education from grades K to 14 (through community colleges). In order to ensure this, there was a statutory split between K-12 and Community colleges ... but, little by little, special interests have been able to divert a higher percentage than provided by law to the K-12 system at the expense of Community Colleges. Tuition at Community Colleges has gone up from FREE to about $500.00. And the Community Colleges have hired more part-time faculty that full-time in order to make ends meet. So, the education is more expensive, and of lower quality. Community College tuition does NOT go to the colleges. The state takes all the fees into the General Fund, unlike at the University system.

California University Systems

The State of California Government should let no contracts or grants to other University Systems - as is currently being done. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of California State funds are currently being paid to the University of Nevada's Dessert Research Institute to conduct engineering and geology studies in California and make recommendations to the State of California regulators. All campus jobs below the Supervisory level that do not require a bachelor's degree or better should be filled by students, with holding at least one campus job or volunteer position being a requirement of graduation.

IMMIGRATION

If it were in my power, I would support a Guest Worker Program in California, but California has almost no control over illegal immigrants in the State. This is the responsibility of the Federal Government. Nevertheless, it is a financial burden and security risk to the State. It is also a financial burden and terrible risk to the Illegals who are subject to abuse and extortion once they have survived the cost and dangers of getting here illegally. The way it is right now is a broken system that must be fixed. It is unconscionable for it to persist the way it is now.

The recently signed law allowing illegal aliens to get drivers licenses allows our government to bypass the immigration issue without facing it. It perpetuates a bad situation for everybody and increases the threat to Homeland Security. I will immediately charge the DMV to issue only paper driver licenses with a stamp in bold saying "This is not Identification" to those who do not volunteer legitimate documentation when applying for a driver's license. Those wishing to also obtain a California Identification Card as their license will have to present the documents. All State legislators, and all or their staff, will immediately have any and all California Identification Cards rescinded and replaced with paper licenses.

The only idea I have to date on controlling immigration is not fully developed, but runs along the idea of the California issuing a California "blue card" picture ID in addition to the green card that legal immigrants hold to work in the US. The blue card would effectively be a debit card. All salaries and wages paid to an immigrant would be direct deposited into the "Blue Card" account -- which could be held in financial institutions. The card would be used as a debit card to make purchases and withdraw limited amounts of cash. In this way, at any given time the financial institution could report the physical address of the most recent transaction -- allowing some tracking of the immigrant's whereabouts and it would limit duplication and forging of green cards for use as identification. The "Blue Card" could be swiped for State identification records. Additionally, all of the earnings attached to one green card would go into a single account, making it even more difficult for green card fraud to perpetuate. Once this "Blue Card System" is set up for documented aliens and the bugs are worked out, California will be poised to expand the program to Guest Workers when that avenue opens through the federal government. We will have the most advanced system for tracking the workers whereabouts and possible financial distress.

ENERGY / ENVIRONMENT / AFFORDABLE HOUSING

ELECTRICITY

The blackouts in California and the recent regional blackout in the Northeast and Canada illustrate the importance of electricity in our lives. We need to site and build sufficient electric power plants to meet the electricity needs of California. We should maintain at least a 20% reserve margin of extra electrical capacity to assure that California will never again be held hostage to unscrupulous out-of-state energy providers. We need to build a mix of power plants so that the state's electricity mix cannot be held hostage to a single type of energy source.

The main problem in California with bringing conventional -- or even alternative -- energy plants on line is the very long, very obstructionist entitlement and CEQA processes which is specific to California. The law is not always being followed and the State has aided and abetted elitist obstructions to new power plants. Many plants have been in the process long enough to make their designs almost obsolete -- certainly not state-of-the-art anymore -- when they upgrade a design; they prolong the regulatory compliance process.

The other problem is the bottleneck of the main transmission line at the waist of the State. Even if we have the power, we cannot get it distributed around the entire State under certain load conditions (and heaven forbid there is actually trouble on the main trunk lines) That is what made the lights go out before and made the contracts for energy coming from outside of that supply line so attractive. The system is old and not adaptable to new technology. Building the infrastructure with redundancy that can eventually replace the "dumb" system would be a top priority.

In the mean time, California bailed out PG&E in part by buying their transmission system. It makes no sense for the State to take on this enormous infrastructure liability, when it has no experience with maintaining it. The State should have a "Best Value" closed-bid auction for the lines where proposals are accepted from companies and consortiums who offer money, good management, and other tradeoffs in a formal proposal process to unload what is a liability to those who can actually take care of it responsibly and transform it into an asset.

AIR

We can work on cleaning the air through private sector-oriented policies. We need a state emissions trading rule that links to the air quality regulations multi-emissions trading program. Utilities, car manufacturers and car owners will have a stock market type of trading system that will reduce emissions. Utilities could link with auto manufacturers in partnerships to examine the feasibility of placing the manufacture and purchase of vehicles in the rate base. We can clean California's air through use of appropriate technology. We need to lead the nation in the manufacture and use of state-of-the-art hybrid vehicles. Finally, we must encourage and provide incentives for all emission free sources of electricity production to clean the air.

WATER

Water is a precious resource. Humans and the Earth's surface are about two-thirds water. California should not be dependent upon the weather to guarantee adequate water supplies to our cities, farms and suburbs. We need an immediate program to build desalination plants to provide at least 20% of the states water by 2014. The desalination plants should be powered by emission-free sources of power.

We should examine the feasibility of water trading program to achieve additional water quality improvements for the state. Cities, farmers, homeowners and businesses should be allowed to reduce water consumption in a market system that rewards such reductions. Facilities and individuals using more than a pre-established amount of water would buy water allowances to satisfy overuse. Water trading would allow water polluters to purchase "credits" from lesser polluters to bring them into compliance with the water quality laws.

Water trading would use economic incentives to enforce water quality regulations. It would allow industrial, agricultural and wastewater treatment plants to meet their regulatory obligations by purchasing offsetting credits from facilities in the same watershed that have exceeded their mandated water quality standards or from non-regulated farms that have helped clean up water.

Sediments, nutrients and microorganisms from industrial and agricultural runoff that is not directly regulated overburden about half of the country's water bodies. This trading program could be helpful in addressing these unregulated non-point sources of pollution.

WEATHER

California cannot depend upon the weather for its water resources. We should not be dependent upon the snow in winter and sufficient rain the rest of the year. We cannot be susceptible to droughts with adequate protections to our industrious agricultural sector. We cannot allow natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, to destroy our ability to function as a modern society.

Weather derivatives -- similar to insurance -- could provide the protection we need. Weather derivatives are financial instruments that help to offset financial risks attributable to variables in the weather. California should take the lead in developing the budding weather derivatives market. For instance, weather derivatives could help California utilities to guard against seasons that are hotter or colder than normal by supplementing revenues if one of these conditions occurs. We should have public and private programs to assure adequate protection from unexpected disasters.

HOUSING

We need to make homeownership available to all Californians at reasonable prices. Housing starts are an indicator of the health of our economy. We should develop more innovative programs to assist citizens to become homeowners.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should launch an immediate program to assist homeowners in California. The past electricity crisis brought on by a botched deregulation program is burdensome to homeowners. Fannie Mae and Freddie should create a secondary energy market by purchasing energy efficiency savings, use these savings as collateral, and offer these savings, like mortgage backed securities (MBS) to investment markets in the form of energy backed securities (EBS)

A more productive scenario might include offers to lenders to purchase homeowners' energy bills as part of the mortgage, bundle the energy bills as futures and either include them in the mortgage backed securities, or offer the option of separating them into energy backed securities. Just as it is reasonably assured that the vast majority of homeowners will pay their mortgages, they will pay their utility bills. The energy savings component could be leveraged as the equivalent of a monthly interest rate in a separate EBS. If consumption is treated as energy future and folded into the mortgage, it provides a reduction of the monthly mortgage payment for the homeowner and an investment opportunity as an EBS. Fannie Mae and Freddie will be helping to reduce monthly mortgage payments by homeowners, purchase larger loans from lenders, and achieve a return on investment through the issuance of EBS.

IMMIGRATION

If it were in my power, I would support a Guest Worker Program in California, but California has almost no control over illegal immigrants in the State. This is the responsibility of the Federal Government. Nevertheless, it is a financial burden and security risk to the State. It is also a financial burden and terrible risk to the Illegals who are subject to abuse and extortion once they have survived the cost and dangers of getting here illegally. The way it is right now is a broken system that must be fixed. It is unconscionable for it to persist the way it is now.

The recently signed law allowing illegal aliens to get drivers licenses allows our government to bypass the immigration issue without facing it. It perpetuates a bad situation for everybody and increases the threat to Homeland Security. I will immediately charge the DMV to issue only paper driver licenses with a stamp in bold saying "This is not Identification" to those who do not volunteer legitimate documentation when applying for a driver's license. Those wishing to also obtain a California Identification Card as their license will have to present the documents. All State legislators, and all or their staff, will immediately have any and all California Identification Cards rescinded and replaced with paper licenses.

The only idea I have to date on controlling immigration is not fully developed, but runs along the idea of the California issuing a California "blue card" picture ID in addition to the green card that legal immigrants hold to work in the US. The blue card would effectively be a debit card. All salaries and wages paid to an immigrant would be direct deposited into the "Blue Card" account -- which could be held in financial institutions. The card would be used as a debit card to make purchases and withdraw limited amounts of cash. In this way, at any given time the financial institution could report the physical address of the most recent transaction -- allowing some tracking of the immigrant's whereabouts and it would limit duplication and forging of green cards for use as identification. The "Blue Card" could be swiped for State identification records. Additionally, all of the earnings attached to one green card would go into a single account, making it even more difficult for green card fraud to perpetuate. Once this "Blue Card System" is set up for documented aliens and the bugs are worked out, California will be poised to expand the program to Guest Workers when that avenue opens through the federal government. We will have the most advanced system for tracking the workers whereabouts and possible financial distress.

CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE LAWS

If we don't learn from history, we are destined to repeat it. We didn't learn the lesson from prohibition which brought forth the most violent crime wave in our nation's history. We are repeating that chapter in history with these "banned substance laws" which are a root cause of street crime right now - there has to be a better solution and California will be the leaders in thinking out of the box to come up with a better solution to the social problems of substance abuse.