My Stance on Issues Facing San Mateo County Residents

By Carlos Romero

Transparency and openness begin with one's own campaign. Below are my positions and thoughts on some of the weightier issues facing our County. As I have done on the East Palo Alto City Council, my positions are never dogmatic, but open to criticism, discussion and reformulation based on vigorous and sound debate.

We need to address the County's long-term structural deficit by balancing the budget within a two to three year time frame in a multi-stakeholder dialogue. No one group got us into this problem and no single entity can solve it; we must all be at the table. I have handled tens of millions of dollars in development and operating budgets in my professional life. I have the seasoned eyes, a head for numbers and experience that I earned managing $165 million in operating and project budgets to be the best candidate to do this job.

Approaching this problem will require us to contain costs, look for operating efficiencies, and collaborate with the unions to improve our financial operations. However, we cannot simply balance the budget on the backs of our workers and residents by constantly cutting wages and services. We need to take a balanced approach to addressing deficits by also looking at the revenue side of the equation as well in a way that is collaborative and accountable. Specifically, we could look at hotel and rental car taxes that do not affect residents of the county as intensely as other taxes. We could also recalibrate user fees to more accurately reflect the actual cost of providing the services. I am open but cautious about sales taxes because they tend to be a regressive form of taxation, affecting working poor and middle class residents disproportionally.

Spur Economic Development Post Redevelopment Agencies (RDAs)

For the last 25 years, I have worked with many city redevelopment agencies throughout the state and chaired the East Palo Alto Redevelopment Agency and Economic Development committees. I understand RDAs and have real experience working collaboratively with diverse parties to produce, design and implement local economic development projects. Further, I have implemented innovative solutions in economic development that are respectful of communities and both replicable and scalable. With the dissolution of RDAs throughout the State, the County faces a massive problem of how to spur local economic development, particularly development that will provide jobs for lower-income residents. Our cities' RDAs brought billions of dollars of construction and other economic activity to the County, but these RDA's ceased to exist on February 1, 2012.

Since the County will play a key role in winding down agency activities and overseeing the disposal of much of their assets, the Board needs a Supervisor who profoundly understands RDAs and economic development, someone who can figure out new ways to spur economic growth within this new paradigm, someone who knows how and with whom to work directly with the cities to return this economic engine to them to address local needs.

I propose that the County develop an economic development bank with the $20 to $25 million of new money it will receive from the dismantled municipal RDAs and allow the cities to access these funds to stimulate additional local economic development. The County should recognize the devastating financial blow our cities were dealt with the dissolution of RDAs and act on this opportunity to invest in development that is responsive to cities' economic development objectives.

Advocate for Pension Reform

The possibility looms that after November, there could be a member of the Board of Supervisors who will be receiving a six figure retirement check from the County in addition to their $117,000 Supervisor salary. Will an elected official, who now so richly benefits from the County's broken pension system, be able to objectively reform it? Maybe. However, we cannot afford to take a chance. I will fight for reform that ensures a sound and fair financial future for both our County employees and our residents.

Indisputably, we are facing a significant unfunded pension liability problem in this County. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Solving this complex problem will require that all parties negotiate in good faith and trust that each party's positions will be handled respectfully. If we cannot reach a solution with all stakeholders at the table, the County faces a massive financial threat that will jeopardize all the County services we receive.

County employees deserve fair compensation and retirement benefits. They should also bear some responsibility for their continued financial security.

I propose we start by looking at the following approaches:

Increasing the share of new employee contributions toward their retirement; Modifying existing retirement terms through negotiations with unions where equitable and constitutional; Sharing the increased administrative cost of retirement contributions with employees; Promoting hybrid plans with some form of defined contribution features; and, Capping retirement income at 60 or 70 percent of the employee's compensation.

Advance Criminal Justice Reform within Parole Realignment

The Board will need to address AB 109, the State's parole realignment program that shifts large numbers of nonviolent criminals from State prisons to the County jail systems. Realignment presents an opportunity to advance criminal justice reform on a County scale by developing cost effective alternative re-entry programs for less hardened, non-violent, and non-sexual offenders through local day reporting centers with vocational training, drug treatment and potentially, jobs. A more robust use of high-tech, electronic monitoring of offenders diverted from our overcrowded jails could save us hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars and make our communities safer by freeing up dollars for better policing and not more jails. In East Palo Alto, we have pioneered such a program. I helped steward the development of this better and more cost effective model to manage parole realignment in my city and will work to do so in the County.

Plan for Healthcare Reform in 2014

San Mateo County has taken a leadership position in the State in preparing to implement healthcare reform and enrollment programs that will provide better access to all our residents. I will support the County's current priorities to provide the best services in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and also to invest and improve its public health care services. No one should be allowed to fall through the safety net. This is a great opportunity for the County to improve preventative and emergency care services, to improve outreach and to enroll more small, family-owned and minority businesses. We must continue to encourage and incentivize the development of unified electronic medical record and practice management within the county system and focus on preventive health care for residents accessing County health services.

Practice Environmental Sustainability within Regional Land Use Policies

Today's elected leaders must demonstrate responsibility to make the environment an integral part of their decision-making process. As we consider land-uses, our County's precious natural resources of open spaces, water and clean air deserve protection for the benefit of our health and economic welfare.

We live in a County that stretches from the densities of our larger cities to the public recreation areas of the Pacific Coast, through the Santa Cruz Mountains down to the San Francisco Bay. Our natural resources require protections and decisions that ensure the best uses of these resources for generations to come. The Grand Boulevard Plan for El Camino Real lays out a vision for retail, office, and residential planning near public transit. When contrasting this plan against the antiquated concept of building on the Bay or continuing sprawl into the Valley, there is no contest if you want to preserve a better economic and environmental future.

Protecting our clean water resources is an unavoidable concern that has no magical solutions. Proposals to drill into the aquifer, build desalination plants and questionable paper agreements with distant water agencies will not provide the sought-after supply our County and cities need. We must come up with sensible, equitable and sustainable solutions to our water needs and look to innovative and price-based water conservation programs to begin to address this problem. Housing demand can be met by infill developments along transit corridors as proposed in the Grand Boulevard vision. The County must help promote these discussions and recognize that there is constituent support for that plan.

I will also continue to support the County's unanimous decision to reject pesticide use for roadside weeds in favor of workable and affordable alternatives.

Public Transit, Caltrain and High-Speed Rail (HSR)

Prosperous and sustainable communities in the future must plan for and incentivize non-motorized vehicle options for their residents. Public transit, Caltrain, and High-Speed Rail are integrally linked in the vexing discussion of sustainable transit priorities and the County must continue to improve affordable and accessible options including bus, rail, bike and pedestrian modes. Efficient alternatives to driving are an essential component to a comprehensive County environmental plan. The Board of Supervisors controls the selection of 3 of the 9 seats on the SamTrans Board, and 1 of the 9 seats on the Caltrain Board, the boards that make decisions on all public transit issues impacting the County. The Supervisors must make wise choices when appointing members to these bodies.

As a County we must make sure that we are served by our public transit investments while protecting our critical transit trunk lines. However, to protect these existing transit investments, first we must fix what we have. I approach HSR from this perspective of "fix the local first." In concept HSR is a sound, environmentally sustainable idea. In practice, however, the expenditure of over $68 billion on a system that will bring travelers to the Bay Area where our public transit infrastructure is in grave need of improvement, repair and expansion requires us to rethink the inequitable allocation of the resources to HSR at the possible expense of local public transit needs. Additional examination of the HSR proposal needs to occur.

The blended system being considered for the Caltrain right of way might be a leap in the right direction. Upgrading Caltrain, our fixed rail public transit spine on the Peninsula, to accommodate electrified rail cars compatible with an eventual convergence with HSR, seems to be a more practical approach to the issue. Finally, addressing the four rail track option through the Peninsula, presently being studied in the Environmental Impact Report, should become a priority given the displacement this approach may bring to cities along the rail alignment.

Advocate for Affordable Housing and the Homeless

We must address affordable housing funding and production, including developing ways to address homelessness in our County. As Supervisor, I would work to create a permanent source of funding for affordable housing in the County such as a document fee on homes sold that could flow into a housing trust fund that would help subsidize affordable housing. I would also advocate for the use of a portion of the cities' Redevelopment Agency taxes, soon to be diverted to the County, to be deposited into a countywide housing trust accessible to all the cities. We could and should look at using our Housing Endowment and Regional Trust (HEART) organization as a possible repository and distributor of these funds. The County should also encourage the adoption of a jobs/housing linkage fee that would generate affordable housing dollars based on the development of net new commercial and office space, justified by the induced need for housing that these types of building uses create. I would also continue to support the County's Housing Department policies of using project-based Section 8 subsidies to help finance the development of affordable housing. In addition, we should redouble efforts to house the homeless, particularly homeless veterans, by utilizing Federal funds made available for this purpose. The County must play a central role in tackling and coordinating funding to address our homeless population within the County. The County's HOPE plan is a start, but without adequate funding the plan will be ineffective. The Board of Supervisors must help lead the charge to identify and develop funding sources to end homelessness in our County.

Advocate for District Elections

I would support any change to the Charter that promotes and expands democracy. District elections would reduce the cost of running for Supervisor, thereby allowing a larger universe of residents to contemplate running for office. It might also allow for a greater diversity of Board members given the changing demographic makeup of the County. We are the last County in the State of California that conducts its elections countywide for each of its 5 district seats. In fact, San Mateo County is currently fighting a lawsuit filed by a group including the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights and the Asian Law Caucus that contends that the current system is inequitable to minorities. Let's face it, the County has radically changed demographically. Why should we waste hundreds of thousands of dollars of our public funds defending this antiquated system? It is time that we let the voters decide this matter.