League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Los Angeles County, CA May 21, 2013 Election
	Richard Valdez Answers Questions Candidate for Council Member; City of Los Angeles; District 6

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

Questions & Answers

1. What do you think is the single most important issue facing the City of Los Angeles today? As Council Member, what would you do to deal with it?

The "Special Interest" entities pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into our elections, which creates a conflict of interest atmosphere for our representative and a lack of confidence in them. I will represent with community based governance, I will not be controlled by political strings, and I will strive to be fair and objective. I will be the "people's voice" at City Hall.

2. 85% of the City's General Fund Budget is for personnel costs. If forced to cut costs to balance the budget, would you favor reducing the number of employees or asking existing employees to accept lower wages and/or reduced benefits?

My goal would be not to reduce the number of employees due to the fact that it would lead to less adequate services provided to our community. I would be more incline to asking certain employees to pay more towards their Health benefits, to be more in line with the average percentage of what other city workers pay.

3. Do you support the DWP taking steps to reduce carbon emissions even if that will result in increased bills for ratepayers?

I do support DWP taking steps to reduce carbon emission, but not at the expense of taxing our community with additional utility bill increases. Mamy of the member of the community in district 6 are already paying over $1000 a year for these programs. There are steps DWP can take that will not incur additional taxes to our community, such as facilitation solar energy by implementing faster approvals on interconnection agreements and automatic approvals on Net-Metering agreements. There are also other ways we can fund carbon emission reduction programs, such as by imposing a fee on imports of products that come from countries that are not taking reasonable steps to reduce carbon emissions.

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Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League. 

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

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: April 1, 2013 14:23
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