League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
	Los Angeles County, CA June 5, 2012 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues Member of the State Assembly; District 66

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Budget, Government reform, Higher education, Major issues Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. How will you prioritize the budget choices the Legislature must make to align the state’s income and spending? Answer from Nathan Mintz: We need to look beyond near-sighted reforms that fix the budget this year while kicking the can further down the road and start making hard decisions about our state's finances. Our first priority in budgeting must be to protect funding for education and public safety. I will fight to increase funding levels for our schools and to keep our neighborhoods safe above all else by redefining our funding priorities, so more money comes to our communities rather than being wasted on paper pushing in Sacramento. The non-partisan think tank which I co-founded, California Common Sense, has identified billions in wasteful and inefficient spending that could be saved by restructuring and simplifying how state government is organized and functions. With over 4800 separate agencies, California rivals the federal government in its complexity. We should look to the model of how other states, such as New York, Texas and others, have delivered services more effectively and cheaper, then mimic what they are doing right. This means reducing the number of agencies, consolidating authority and making greater use of automation and outsourcing where appropriate to get the job done. We also need to modernize our tax structure. We are too dependent on a shrinking pool of taxpayers for income tax revenue versus other sources of revenue such as sales tax receipts. Taxes in this state in general are too high. We should look for ways to make state revenue less dependent on income tax, and more dependent on sales tax. This tax structure has made us more susceptible to the boom and bust cycles of the economy from a revenue perspective. We can do this by flattening out our state income tax rates and broadening the sales tax base through the elimination of loopholes -- greatly simplifying our tax code, moderating the year to year fluctuations in revenue and putting our state on more stable fiscal footing. 2. What types of changes or reforms, if any, do you think are important to make our state government function more effectively? Answer from Nathan Mintz: -- Enact pension reform immediately to address the $150 billion plus unfunded liability of our current public employee pension system. -- end abuses such as spiking and disability retirement fraud -- cap pensions at 100k for general employees and 130k for public safety -- re-balance pension formulas (e.g. 3% per year at 50) and the employee contribution share to put the system back in balance. -- Consolidate and streamline state government to save money and improve service. --Organize state government so it gets the same job done with fewer organizations and agencies. --Simplify the processes by which services are administered. For instance, welfare benefits should be managed through a single entity with a single in-processing rather than 50 separate ones with 50 separate forms for the beneficiary to fill out, as is currently the case. This will create more accountability and reduce costs. -- Reform our state's prison and justice system to reduce incarceration and administration costs. It currently costs more to incarcerate a felon in San Quentin state prison than it would to send them to school at Stanford University. -- Repeal wrong headed realignment policies that are putting violent criminals back out on the streets and passing the buck from our state's prison system to local counties and city governments -- Find cost savings in our state's correction system through greater oversight and re-evaluated our incarceration criteria -- Reduce recidivism rates through greater use of drug treatment and rehabilitation programs. -- Increase local control of our schools -- Simplify funding requirements so that local school boards have more flexibility in how they spend their money -- Reduce the size of the education bureacracy in Sacramento and send the money back to local school districts -- Protect teachers who teach well from layoffs and put students first 3. Fees for public higher education have gone up dramatically and funding has been cut. Is this a priority concern, and if so, what measures would you propose to address it? Answer from Nathan Mintz: The UC/CSU system is one of the cornerstones of the California dream. Recently, instead of making hard decisions about administrative bloat and refocusing our universities on graduating students, the UC/CSU regents have decided to pass the buck on to students. Currently, the CSU system employs more administrators then professors, yet we are raising tuition and cutting classes. Professors at CSUs and UCs teach fewer classes and take more frequent sabbaticals then their counterparts at private universities like Stanford, Loyola Marymount of USC. Instead of addressing these structural concerns, we are making the students pay for it. Before we allow the UC/CSU regents to raise tuition, we should: --- Require Professors to teach as many classes as their private school counterparts and take fewer sabbaticals. --- Reduce administrative needs at our universities through greater use of outsourcing and technology. --- Increase online course offerings that are of a lesser marginal cost difference per student than conventional classes. --- Reconfigure the curriculum across the different CSU/UCs to specialize in certain majors and specialties from campus to campus to consolidate course loads and focus on putting resources in the majors that are in the highest demand to get students out of school quicker. 4. What other major issues do you think the Legislature must address? What are your own priorities? Answer from Nathan Mintz: -- Make California a friendler place to do business: -- Curb Frivolous Lawsuits that are preying on small businesses through enacting real tort reform. -- Streamline regulations and apply a means test to new ones. -- Renew the new homebuyer's tax credit -- Create "loan local" tax credits to encourage California banks to loan to California businesses -- Expand state enterprise zones that act as incubators for business Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. References to opponents are not permitted. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.