Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky Farewell Remarks

CHAIRMAN ZEV YAROSLAVSKY
OUTGOING MESSAGE, DECEMBER 3, 2002

On December 3, 2002, outgoing Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky turned over the gavel to Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who becomes the new Chair for 2002-3. The following is adapted from his remarks:

Madam Chair, Board colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I want to thank the Executive Office staff, the Chief Administrative Office, and the County Counsel - really, the three key offices that any chair has to depend on - I want to thank them for their cooperation in making the job for me and my staff as easy as it has been over the last year.

I also wanted to thank my own staff, which worked very hard in helping me negotiate the administrative responsibility, which the chairmanship is, more than anything else. It's not all the fun that it's cracked up to be sometimes.

I also want to thank my colleagues for the collaborative spirit in which we worked during the last year. We did a lot, accomplished a lot this year, a tremendous amount, and I want to thank my colleagues' staff also, without whom things won't get done around here.

I want to be brief, but I do want to note just a few things. Number one, despite the fact that the state and local governments statewide – including our own - are facing serious fiscal difficulties, the Board of Supervisors’ continued adherence to fiscal discipline that we've shown in recent years, has positioned us as well as we can be positioned to deal with the problems that we obviously are going to face with a recessionary economy and a very, very difficult financial situation in Sacramento.

Clearly, I think the highlight of the year was the coming together of the Board and the people of this County in the passage of Measure B just a month ago today. I also want to make special mention of the critical, singular role that SEIU Local 660 and their members played in the passage of this initiative.

Nobody gave it much of a chance. But we took our shot, and we were able to level with the people of this County, and they heard the message. And they made a very wise and important decision that will stand the County and the people of this County in good stead for many years to come in passing the property tax and saving the trauma and emergency room system.

That this County - the County that gave birth to the Howard Jarvis tax-limitation movement – would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. But people are smart, and if you level with them - and this is a lesson that I think our Legislature and our Governor could learn in the weeks ahead, “level with the people” - they can deal with bad news and challenges, if you just level with them.

We did that, and as a result, we're talking about saving hospitals instead of closing them here a month after that election.

Turning to other areas, this has also been a big year for the Children and Families First Proposition 10 Commission, now known as First 5 LA. There we made two major decisions: The first was to set aside $100 million from that 50 cents per pack tobacco tax to provide health care for uninsured children from birth to age five in households earning up to three times the poverty income level, massively increasing the number of kids who will be able to see a doctor when they need to. As a result of the Prop.10 Commission's decision to set aside this money, there is no reason why any child aged five or younger won’t be able to find health care once this program is fully implemented in the weeks ahead.

The second thing the Prop.10 Commission did this year was to set aside another $100 million to begin a universal preschool program, which is something that the father of the Prop. 10 concept, Rob Reiner, has been pushing for and a number of other advocates have been pushing for: to prepare kids, before they reach school age, so that they have a level playing field to compete on, and be prepared for quality education to be able to succeed in life.

Here at the County, I think it's a good thing that we've made changes in the Department of Children and Family Services. This Board is committed to making a threshold change with new professional leadership across the board, to try to bring that Department into the 21st century and to whip this whole program into shape. Under Interim Director Marge Kelly's leadership, and under permanent leadership, it will be a new day for children in this county.

The Los Angeles County Task Force on Children and Youth Physical Fitness that this Board created earlier in the year released its report in August, which has continued to have positive ramifications throughout the County in districts, and here inside the county family itself. Proper nutrition and physical fitness is critical to stemming the epidemic of diabetes and other complications that stem from that among our teens. Dr. Francine Kaufman, who led that commission (and is president of the American Diabetes Association), along with all of the members of that commission that the Board of Supervisors appointed, did a great job, and I want to thank them for that work.

This year, too, our Board made some major strides in opening up County government and making it more accessible so that the public can better see and understand what we do, and participate more closely in that process. More information is available on-line than ever before, and we’ve significantly tightened up our accountability and internal record keeping, which was long overdue. And that’s a very good thing, for us as elected officials and for the people we serve.

On the fiscal and budget front, I'm happy that the County board was able to stand up for the principle that only this Board makes budgetary decisions. We successfully went to court against proposed initiatives on two separate occasions to retain our right to make our own budgetary decisions. We can't have budgetary and salary and benefits decisions made by initiative; it could just send this County into bankruptcy in two seconds flat.

At the same time, I'm also pleased that the Board did for our homecare workers what we had been prepared to do for some time - to get them back on a progressive scale to improve wages and benefits. We still have some work to do on that, but we're moving in the right direction.

In conclusion, I want to say a word on the state budget and how it's going to affect us. I will end where I started off, and that is that it's been my experience that if you level with people, you can get the people behind you on some of the most difficult and controversial decisions.

The State of California now faces somewhere between - pick your number - a $25 billion to $30 billion deficit.

There's no way you can close that deficit on cuts alone. You just can't do it. And I'll just say, without reservation, they are going to have to raise revenues at the state level as well as making cuts. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson did it in 1991. It cost him, but he did it because that's the only way he could close his $14 billion deficit. Seven billion was done with cuts, and seven billion was done with tax increases. You can't close a $30 billion hole without having a combination of efficiencies, consolidations, cuts, and revenues.

People asked me, "What revenue would you suggest?" and I said, "Start with a tax on liquor."

Is there anybody in this state, other than the liquor industry, who believes that we shouldn't be taxing liquor?

Just about every issue that we face here in this county is tied to liquor: trauma, health care, heart disease, and criminal justice. All the substance-abuse complications that we get and all of our human services - many of them, a majority of them, are related to substance abuse and the biggest single substance that we abuse as a society is liquor.

So if the governor and the Legislature would have the guts to just say to the liquor industry, you know, "You've had a good ride for 200 years. But a nickel a drink or more on hard liquor is not something you can't afford, and not having it is something we cannot afford," I think the Legislature and the Governor have to lead, as this Board has led in the County in the last year.

And I hope that we've set an example that there is life after proposing a revenue increase. You can even get the people behind you, even in Los Angeles County - almost a 3-to-1 to vote for a revenue increase - and without that, Madam Chair, this County, other counties and cities across the state, are going to be in a world of hurt. And more than that, the people we represent are going to be in a world of hurt, and we can't afford that.

I want to thank you and congratulate you upon your assuming the Chair, and to congratulate in advance our new Chair Pro Tem, Supervisor Don Knabe, and my other colleagues for the great job we've done collectively and collaboratively over the last year. I look forward to the next year under your leadership.