League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
San Diego County, CA June 5, 2012 Election
	Farrah Douglas Answers Questions Candidate for Member of the State Assembly; District 76

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. How will you prioritize the budget choices the Legislature must make to align the state’s income and spending?

Balancing the State budget is a top priority. The Legislative Analyst's office predicts by the end of 2013 California will have a $13 billion budget deficit. We can't tax our businesses and families to death to cure this deficit. At the time when many businesses are leaving our state ( in 2011 every week 5 businesses left CA) and our families have lost their jobs and their homes, increasing taxes is not an option. My solutions are: 1) Transparent budget process so our voters can understand their choices and be a part of our democracy. 2) Auditing the budget line by line to identify and eliminate waste. 3) cutting spending by attrition: reducing the size of the state government, consolidating jobs, using technology to replace redundant and outdated positions. 4) Increasing income by relaxing and reducing regulations, reducing business fees and taxes, balancing environmental concerns with the needs of the businesses, implementing methods of rewarding those who perform well and providing best service for best value. 5) Putting the business of people above ideological divides and making the legislature accountable to our voters and families for every bill they introduce and every vote they cast. 6)Education, public safety, infrastructure, job creation and reduction of wasteful spending are my other top priorities.

2. What types of changes or reforms, if any, do you think are important to make our state government function more effectively?

Here are the changes that are important to make: 1) Transparent government. 2) Educating our voters so they would elect the most qualified candidate with verifiable record of accomplishments and service. 3) voting for part time legislature 4) limiting the number of bills that legislature can introduce in one session. 5) having the members of the Assembly and Senate to verify that they have read the bills before voting on them. 6) Making sure all bills are accessible on the internet for public review and comment 72 hours prior to voting by legislature. 7) Stopping the process of Gut and Amend, in which during the last few days prior to voting the content of a bill is gutted and replaced by a completely different item and then voted on without any public scrutiny and in most cases without being reviewed by the legislature. If we make these changes then the members of the Assembly and Senate with have time enough to concentrate on the business of people rather than fighting each other with competing bills. We need elected officials who will roll up their sleeves from day one and get busy solving our issues and problems. Sacramento has become a bill producing machine and I will stop it.

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?

I'm a strong supporter of Education. For over 8 years I chaired Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce's education committee and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for our public schools. In addition I've studied at MiraCosta College, Palomar College and SDSU and I'm very familiar with the cost of higher education. For the past three years I've served on the Advisory Board to the President at Cal State San Marcos. I understand the dilemma our higher education institutes are facing. Every year their budget is cut and reduced. In fact my understanding is that since 2000 Cal State San Marcos has reduced its cost and spending by 42% but still had to increase fees by 15%. Even at that the University still faces over $2 million in deficit. The first thing we have to do is to stop the Governor from cutting the education budget. It's not just outright cuts that has hurt our higher education and k-12 system. There are other cuts that people are not aware of. for example the Governor moved about $5 billion from sales tax and nearly $500 million for vehicle license fee to a Special Fund Account to provide funding source for his realignment plan and to move prisoners to local jurisdictions. The Governor projected a $1.1 billion savings because of his realignment efforts. However, because of the way the movement of the funds had been arranged, most of the state's fiscal benefit from realignment in 2011-2012 has come from proposition 98 savings (education funding). By depositing the sales tax and vehicle registration fees into a special fund for use by local governments for realignment, these funds are not available for the legislature to spend so they are not counted as the state's income. The education budget is 40% of the state revenue for K-12 and 12% is for higher education. By removing nearly $5.5 billion from the state's budget the education budget was cut. This action reduced Prop 98 funding by $2 billion in 2011-2012. We need Assembly Members and Senators who understand these details and who care about the future of our students to stop practices such as this one. I am very interested in education and I will be a strong voice advocating for good policies regarding higher and K-12 education.

4. What other major issues do you think the Legislature must address? What are your own priorities?

In addition to job creation, reduction of regulations and taxes and supporting education and our schools, the following are other issues I'll be working on in Sacramento.

1) Public safety. Having a secure state is the right of every CA residents. We need to have adequate funding for Police Officers and Fire Fighters so they can keep our families safe and secure. 2) Pension reform is another top priority. We need to push for state-wide reforms which support a balanced budget while providing ample funding for our retirees. 3)infrastructure. Our state government doesn't spend nearly enough on repairing our old infrastructure. These repair will promote commerce and will help our local economy. 4) Water. Southern California is a desert and our economy, jobs and livelihood depend on having safe and secure sources of water. In Carlsbad we will proudly host the first Seawater Desalination Plant in Southern California. While this is a huge step toward water security, it is not nearly enough. We need to recycle more water and build more desalination plants and water storage facilities. I have toured the Sacramento River, Bay Delta and Colorado River, which are the sources of our water in Southern CA. There are 1100 miles of mud levies that were built in 1800s. A major earth quake will demolish them and will leave the Southern CA without adequate drinking water for about 6 months. there is no funding in the State budge for the repair of these levies. We need to address this issue immediately.

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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.

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: May 11, 2012 13:26
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