League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
	Chuck Page Answers Questions Candidate for Member of the State Assembly; District 28

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 would you prioritize the fiscal choices the Legislature must make to align the state’s income and spending?

As your Assembly Representative, I will address the wall of debt while easing the over-regulation burden of businesses to create new job opportunities. A huge portion of the wall of debt has been created by promising government retirees huge pensions and health benefits, all paid for by the taxpayers. We must honor those contracts for current retirees, but open up negotiations to compassionately provide our current government employees and teachers with pensions and benefits that will actually be there when they retire. We must eliminate the spiking of pensions by not including accumulated sick and vacation pay in the base pay calculation. I will focus my energies to eliminate the duplication of efforts in the healthcare system and other government agencies, providing additional funds for needed programs. To ensure public participation, government must be transparent. I will create a website that shows each of my votes and WHY I voted that way, and how the bill will benefit or hurt both my district and the state of CA.

2. Given our current drought condition, concern for water rights and usage is an important issue. What solutions would you support to address our water problems?

As Chair of the League of California's Environmental Policy Committee, we convened a state-wide task force to address this issue. The two biggest issues are storage and conveyance. We were successful in getting those 2 issues prioritized in the November ballot's bond measure. If the bond measure passes, funding will be used to create storage facilities and facilities to transport water to where it needs to be. I will fight for expansion of recycled water conveyance systems. More than 60% of the fresh water used in urban & suburban areas is used to water lawns. This is wrong and could be alleviated through the use of recycled water, which is created in abundance at every wastewater treatment plan in the state.

3. California high school students rank lower than many states in student performance. What do you see as the ongoing role of the Legislature in addressing this problem?

While in the Assembly, I will focus on holding schools accountable. Every student in this state MUST have the opportunity for a high-quality public education. I am an advocate of Charter Schools as a way to create competition for students, encouraging lower performing schools to step up the quality of education and the subsequent achievements of the students, but they must be held to the same standards as our public schools. I will fight for meaningful reform of teacher tenure - providing incentives for good teachers, but making it easier to remove poor performing teachers and those found guilty of wrong-doing.

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

The first thing I will do as your Assembly representative is push for legislation that expels any member of the State Legislature who violates the public trust and is convicted. Furthermore, those individuals will be ineligible for retiree benefits beyond what they earned prior to their discretions.

I will seek to eliminate the waste and duplication in our current State sponsored healthcare programs, while ensuring that more people actually receive heath insurance & care. As your assembly representative, I will seek job retraining and drug abuse programs for those incarcerated at county jails - these are not hardened criminals, and can be rehabilitated.

As your Assembly representative, I will seek to answer the question, "When is a city built out?" We must ensure that higher density housing is built near where people work and have access to public transit. Forcing cities that are already built out and have no access to public transit to add housing is only going to add to our greenhouse gas problems. This must be done with cities having local control of their own neighborhoods, not with regional mandates that do not take into consideration the resultant effects of increased traffic, greenhouse gas emissions or other detrimental affects.

I will continue to work for complete transparency in government. As a council member, I led the effort to make the videos of our meetings be the permanent public record of our meetings, not sketchy and haphazard minutes. Our state legislature should be the same. Additionally, all negotiations with public sector bargaining units should be 100% public. After all, taxpayer dollars are being used to fund the results of the negotiations, therefore the negotiations should be public.

Finally, with me as your Assembly Rep, you will get complete honesty and my lifetime of experience - in the real world and as a business person. I've managed multi-million dollar budgets in business and it helped me to balance Saratoga's budget for 8 years while reducing taxes TWICE! My 35+ years of problem solving have taught me to listen much more than I talk and to always base my decisions on my values, morals and ethics. I will never tell you what I think you want to hear, but I will be completely honest and ask for your help to educate me on issues that I need to learn more about. It will take experienced legislators to solve California's problems, and people who have not had any life or business experience will fail. Please vote for Chuck Page - experience, problem-solving and common sense!

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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: October 1, 2014 17:38
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