What Californians should be thinking about

An interview with Alberto Torrico, Assembly Majority Leader
By Western Edition staff

Alberto Torrico is currently a member of the California State Assembly since Dec. 6, 2004. He serves as Majority Leader, the second highest post in California’s State Assembly.

Torrico has had an interesting career in that he specialized in labor law, taught labor and employment law at San Jose City College and served as assistant general counsel at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose.

When asked about the economy, Torrico expressed concern that Californians and the rest of the country will not see a recovery in the near future.
“Well I heard (in September) the reported unemployment rate was almost 13 percent, the fourth highest in the country. That’s the reported number,” he said. “The real number of unemployed could be significantly higher. It could be twice as high, could be three times as high – 35 to 40 percent – because when you apply for unemployment that is the number that gets reported, once your benefits run out, you are no longer reported. So there are tens of thousands of people who are in that category that have already received unemployment and they haven’t found a job. They are unemployed, (have) no benefits and no health care coverage.”

Torrico continued, “Historically, in this country there have been two major economic drivers that pull us out of recessions. One of them has been the housing market (new housing in particular). The new housing market is null because of the foreclosures. The other has been the auto industry. Our auto companies in the United States are bankrupt. They just received a bailout from the federal government. So there’s no hope that the auto industry is going to pull us out of this recession. I believe that California specifically and in the rest of the country, we are a ways away from an economic recovery. What will pull us out of this recession will be green technology and innovation. That takes time because people with money who will invest in those technologies are cautious and hanging on to their money.”

Torrico also expressed concern about the banks’ response to the credit needs of its customers.

“We bailed out all of the banks and the insurance companies. The reason for the bailout was to loosen up credit. To make sure people didn’t lose their homes. That’s not happening,” he said. “The banks are taking all the money and they’re balancing their sheets and making their shareholders happy. They’ve not loosened up credit for homeowners. The foreclosure rate is not getting any better it is worsening. They are not giving out loans to small businesses or large businesses. They are not doing anything to stimulate the economy. In retrospect, the Bush bailout with congressional approval didn’t have enough requirements to force Wall Street to get the money out (to people).”

Torrico expressed similar disappointment with the car factories. The same is happening in the auto industry. He said he is disheartened that unionized workers are loosing jobs.

“Adding insult to injury, I heard over the radio that GM who pulled out of Fremont, was going to re-open their operations in Columbia. Not Columbia, S.C., but the country of Columbia. So we are paying for jobs with taxpayer money for jobs as far as GM in another country.
“Unfortunately, I don’t see an economic recovery coming anytime soon,” he concluded.

When asked what Californian’s should be looking at besides the economy and energy and other front burner issues, Torrico said this was an infrastructure no social issue.

“Immediately, it’s water. If we don’t have water for the Central Valley, we’re not going to have any farms,” he said. “If we don’t have any farms we are not going to have any fruits/vegetables. We will have to start importing our fruits/vegetables from other states and other countries.”

Torrico said that importing would not be a good idea because the safety standards for food in California are the highest in the country and the world. It could become dangerous to eat, and “that’s something immediate that people should be paying attention to.

“Now, a bigger picture – Education. We are so far behind the rest of the world in educating our kids and we need to turn that around. Our kids are not graduating form high school prepared to enter the 21st century’s global economy. We don’t have the level of investment in our K-12 education that we used to have. I’m talking about not 50 years ago; I am talking about what we had in the mid-70s before Proposition 13. How much money do we spend compared to other states? We are down in the bottom five. We used to be in the Top 5, when we were in the Top 5 our performance was in the Top 5. Now we’re in the Bottom 5 and guess where our performance is? The Bottom 5.

“(We have to) figure out a way to fund our schools and look at revolutionary changes, quite frankly. Like Proposition 13, where we don’t assess commercial property. You could be a huge, financially capable corporation and own your building from 1978, and you pay 1978 taxes on that building. I don’t think anyone thought that would be the case when they voted. When they voted for prop 13, we thought we were protecting residential properties, we thought we were protecting seniors on fixed incomes. Well we are doing that, but we are also protecting corporations. It’s costing us a lot of money and it’s costing our schools the most.

“We also have to figure out a different way to teach our kids, too. Even something as simple as our school calendar, which is based on an agricultural economy. That’s why we are off during the summer. Kids used to have to go work on the farm. Not that many kids work on farms anymore. People don’t like to hear this, but our kids should to be going to school 10 months out of the year and the school days should be longer, they shouldn’t be going to school for 6 hours. In other countries kids go to school for eight hours. It is something we need to start doing, which means we have to pay teachers more, we have to put money in our schools. We have to modernize our schools. Most classrooms don’t have computers in California. We have to change the way we teach our kids, give teachers the resources they need and be bold. We need big changes in the way we teach our kids. “

Torrico had even more to say about the need for improved education: “When we base our prison budget, 15 years in advance we look at the reading levels of our third grade students. That is (one way) we predict our prison population. If we know that the reading level is a critical indicator of future problems, then we should increase funding for K-12 and we should do universal pre-school. We know the answers, but we have not had the willingness to invest in our education.”

This led to a brief discussion on the prison system.
“Currently we are at 200 percent population, twice as many people than they were built for. Our rate of return, within four years is 70 percent. It is the worst in the country by far. We don’t evaluate or assess our rehabilitation programs. We spend $750 million dollars on rehabilitation and you will be shocked to know that we don’t evaluate any of those programs for success. More shocking, we don’t even assess the inmates properly when they come in. The idea should be that when an inmate comes in you make an assessment. You assess any issues, educational, vocational, health and drug use and based on that assessment, you place the inmate into a program. Who currently does those assessments in our prisons? We have doctors, counselors and nursed that work there. They don’t do the assessments, the prison guards do. With all due respect to the prison guards, they have a tough job to do. I don’t think we should be wasting their time doing those assessments. They should be doing their job which is watching the population and the facility.”

Torrico said that the state of the prison system should provide incentive to ensure that children are educated and kept out of trouble. Additionally, he said that parole officer case loads are too high. He cited the recent case where four Oakland police officers were killed during a routine stop by a parolee who was wanted on charges of assault as direct impact of an overburdened system.

Part of Torrico’s work has included jurisdiction over Native American tribes. The current situation of the tribal communities?
“There are about 140 federally recognized tribes in California, maybe more. About 60 to 70 percent have casinos,” Torrico said. “A lot of the tribes that are doing gaming – about 25 to 30 – are doing very well. We have more slot machines in California than Las Vegas. It’s a big business in California.

Part of the idea behind Indian Tribes having casinos is giving them economic independence because most of the Native Americans live in poverty.

They have higher rates of illiteracy, higher rates of diabetes, higher rates of alcoholism, higher rates of suicide, higher rates of unemployment, higher dropout rates. They have all of the problems that we see in inner cities, throughout California and throughout the country.

“The idea was that if Native Americans were given a monopoly they could run casinos, and that would start to give them an economic independence. There is a big group of tribes that have that. They are doing very well. Every tribe in California that does not have gaming receives from the larger tribes (that have gaming) $1.1 million dollars per year. That’s a good thing.

“Here’s the problem: Most tribes, rather than having a long term view in investing the 1.1 million … they will distribute it out. However, many members they have they just divide it and send it out. It hasn’t empowered those communities. So what I’ve been considering is going to the big tribes and requesting that we put more money into that pot. Then the tribes could continue to distribute the 1.1 million without restrictions, but use the federal governments model for the added funds and say, if you want more money you can apply for it. It would be grant funding controlled by the tribal members.”

Torrico added he envisions tribal members planning and developing projects that can provide healthcare for members, start business enterprises or provide college funding.

The Majority Leader said he hopes that the next governor will convene a meeting of the tribes to discuss the long-term future of empowering the Native American communities.

“It’s really something we need to do because we haven’t seen the fruits of gambling translating into the overall raising the standard of living for the Native American communities.”