TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111891/1118511.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.3 KB | 229 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 54

CALIFORNIA

"There Is A Limit To What We Can Absorb"


Governor PETE WILSON warns that California is confronting a
painful choice: be less generous to newcomers or be buried by
relentless growth

BY HENRY MULLER AND JOHN F. STACKS and Pete Wilson


    Q. Is the California Dream threatened by all the problems
the state faces?

    A. The state has got to achieve an equilibrium. We're in
a period when we have taken on a number of burdens, some
natural, some of our own making. This is a rich state by any
number of indexes. But as with a rich country, there are
practical limits to what you can do. There are also political
limits to what people are willing to assume in the way of
burdens.

    California is going through a period of change. Growth is
not new to us. David Gardner, the president of the University
of California, was asked to give a one-sentence definition of
California, and he said, "They found gold here in '49, and they
haven't stopped coming ever since."

    But the growth is relentless. We're experiencing something
that's very troubling to me, and that is an outflow of those who
are the producers -- and a tremendous increase in the number of
consumers of services, particularly children. When I say that
there has to be an equilibrium, that's really what I'm talking
about. There has to be an ability of the state to grow
economically to keep pace with the burdens placed on it.


    Q. The problem comes down to California's rapid population
growth, doesn't it?

    A. Since 1985 the state's population increased 18%. School
enrollments increased 23%. Welfare increased 31 1/2%, and
Medi-Cal, which is what we call our Medicaid, increased 49%.
Delaware moves to this state annually.

    I've been to two National Governors' Association meetings.
The theme of both was that federal mandates, especially health
care, are going to bankrupt the states. Look at an ironic
situation: one federal statute says illegal workers are
ineligible for public assistance, but another federal statute
says that their children shall be enrolled in the state public
school system. That's why we're adding about a quarter-million
kids a year -- from all of it, from the birthrate, from the
migration from other states.


    Q. Is there anything you can do to slow the population
inflow?

    A. We will have to minimize the magnetic effect of the
generosity of this state. When I make this comment, people
immediately will say, "You're anti-poor people." I'll be accused
of racism. The fact of the matter is, Californians are having
to pay a disproportionate share of the national burden for
supporting the poor. What we are going to have to do, I think,
is either make an internal decision to be less generous or,
better, ask the Federal Government -- notably the Congress --
to give some relief on these mandates because their good
intentions are threatening the stability even of rich states
like California. There is a limit to what we can absorb.

    Internally, the people of this state are going to have to
decide what their priorities are. They've indicated that the
most urgent from their standpoint is education. And I don't
disagree with that. Education needs reform so that we can have
a competent and productive work force. That's true here; that's
true nationwide.

    We have to consider the kind of kids that are going into
the classroom. Are they prepared to learn? Are they healthy
enough to concentrate? Which is why we have laid such heavy
emphasis on a preventive -- as opposed to remedial -- approach.
One program in particular is designed to ready children for the
classroom. Today, as much as I may criticize the quality of our
education, I have enormous sympathy for the classroom teacher
who is asked to be substitute parent, social worker and, in some
cases, cop. They shouldn't have to be any of those things. What
they have to be, obviously, is on the alert to try to get
children the sort of help that they need, whether it's mental
health counseling or physical examinations.

    But basically, all these things we're talking about depend
upon our having the sort of economic base, the capability to
maintain an employment base that will keep pace with this
population. And California is not an island. We are in
competition with other states, with other nations -- and the
fact that we offer vast markets in no way makes us irresistible
to business. It is possible to exploit California's markets
while being headquartered in Arizona or Nevada or, for that
matter, North Carolina. We have to be very concerned that we
maintain our competitiveness.


    Q. What will be the impact of the great new ethnic mix?

    A. The changing demographics of California are reflective
of a growth that is very much a mixed blessing. At the same
time that we are renewed and enriched and refreshed by the
energy and creativity of a new generation of immigrants, they
are a mixed blessing in the sense that our overall population
is becoming much younger. As I mentioned, we have an exodus from
the state of those who are in their productive years and a great
increase in the growth of the child population. And as a result
of that, there's a great increase of consumers of expensive
governmental services -- of education, of health care and
welfare. So that is what is reflective of the changing
demographics. More than anything else, it means that the state
is growing younger.

    On the good side, we believe that not only our geography
but also this diversity of our population puts us in a
particularly advantageous position to exploit what we think is
going to be a transpacific explosion. We think there is going
to be a tremendous increase in the importance of transpacific
trade, and, indeed, it has already begun. Today a greater volume
of our trade crosses the Pacific than the Atlantic.


    Q. Can the state's political institutions keep up with the
challenges raised by the rapid rate of change in all these
areas?

    A. Part of it is the rapid rate of change, and part of it
is just the inability of the legislature to be as responsive as
it should be. We don't have affordable car insurance because the
trial lawyers' lobby has been successful in killing it. We don't
have [enough] reform of workers' compensation because the
applicants' attorneys will be successful in forestalling any
reform beyond what we achieved this year.


    Q. It is being said more and more that there is a sheer
physical limit to the number of people who can live here because
of the environmental constraints. Assuming you could take care
of all the governmental and financial problems you've described,
the question remains: Is this a state that can support not only
30 million but maybe 40 million or 50 million people?

    A. It's true that in existing urban centers you have a
problem of congestion that I think is far more serious to manage
than even the quality of the air that automobile traffic
produces. I am convinced that by moving to alternative fuels,
we will have significantly improved air quality and still be
confronted with horrendous congestion unless we take steps to
alleviate that. The people in this state at the last election
approved $3 billion worth of rail-bond issues. In the primary
in June 1990 they approved essentially a doubling of the gas
tax. That will produce enough funding for highway construction.
If that hadn't occurred, we would have been absolutely strangled
by our own traffic.

    Is there a limited carrying capacity? That's something
people have been arguing for years. I think the answer depends
on the extent to which you are willing to anticipate and
accommodate growth. The quality of life doesn't depend
exclusively upon numbers. You can have a miserable quality of
life in a small village. You can have an infinitely better
quality of life in a large city. It depends on whether or not
the necessities and amenities have been provided, and that
requires first and foremost that you anticipate and accommodate,
and that you've got the economic base.

    The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of free travel.
The courts have gone much further and have inferred from that
the right to reside. Indeed, in a number of cases they have
rejected efforts -- by Connecticut and Hawaii and others -- to
deny to new residents the welfare benefits that are paid to
established residents. I happen to think those cases are wrong.
It seems to me that at the very least there should be a period
in which new residents do not receive the benefits that the
state provides. People have talked about a three-year waiting
period. Otherwise, you have a situation in which you are risking
the health of your economic base.


    Q. Looking at all this, do you ever wonder whether
California is ungovernable?

    A. Being Governor of any state, and certainly a state with
California's problems, is fraught with difficulty. Representing
California in the Senate [which Wilson did from 1983 to 1991]
seems like a cloistered existence, even if being a Senator from
California is very different from being a Senator from a small,
relatively homogeneous state. The difference, still, is that
this is a much better job -- for all its slings and arrows. It's
far more demanding, but it's far more satisfying, far more
interesting.


    Q. Do you see your kind of politics of the center having
a chance at the national level? Or is the power of the extremes
still too great?

    A. I don't think that the power of the extremes is too
great. By and large, I don't delude myself that the vast
majority of the American people are thinking about politics. In
fact, they prefer not to think about it. They want services
delivered, and they really don't much care how. But they are
inherently schizophrenic: they want the services, but they don't
want the tax to pay for these services.

    Still, there is a basic difference between the parties,
and that's healthy because it produces competition that is
absent in a number of other countries. The problem, frankly, is
that whether you talk about Sacramento or Washington, too often
the people who are engaged in the competition forget that it is
for the purpose of benefiting the public and not the
politicians.