Author: SacBee — Opinion

Amariana Crenshaw was found dead after a fire in a rental her foster mother owned.

State social services officials have finally done the right thing by removing Tracy Dossman from the roster of approved foster parents.

But it took too long for the Department of Social Services to conclude that Dossman’s foster home in Sacramento presented “a threat to the health and safety” of children and to order her foster family agency to stop placing children with her.

Her string of troubling lapses goes back years and culminated in the January 2008 unsolved death of 4 1/2-year-old Amariana Crenshaw, who was in Dossman’s charge when she was found burned beyond recognition. Dossman’s record – checkered would be a charitable description – did not come to public attention until a series of stories last month in The Bee, which triggered the Social Services inquiry into her fitness to be a foster mother.

The department needs to do some internal soul-searching and pose this question to itself: In the future, how can it more quickly identify foster parents with problems – and decertify them before there’s a needless tragedy?

Spokeswoman Lizelda Lopez said that the department would have no comment because it does not want to jeopardize the case against Dossman, in the event she decides to appeal the decision.

Another warning the department should heed is that it should tighten up on private foster family agencies that act as middlemen across California, recruiting, training and overseeing foster parents, and placing children with them.

Dossman went from one such agency to another as at least 46 children were placed with her since 2003.

Her last agency, Positive Option Family Service, came under state scrutiny late last year. In December, Social Services ordered the agency to make fixes or risk losing its license. Lopez said officials will meet with Positive Option this summer to check its progress, and if it is not in compliance, “we will take appropriate action then.”

Unfortunately, the likelihood of bad foster parents being spotted early in Sacramento County almost certainly was diminished when county supervisors, to help plug a $10 million hole in the budget, voted last week to slash another 49 positions from Child Protective Services, nearly half the total job losses.

CPS officials say that 14 of them directly worked with foster families and that social workers now have double the recommended caseload, as many as 70 children in some programs.

It is one of the worst consequences of the recession and the subsequent budget-slashing: The most vulnerable among us will be the victims.

Given the state of affairs in California, if you could move out, would you? Why or why not? To comment on this issue, please see our forum.

There was a time when California was a migration destination. With its sun-drenched coasts, dynamic economy and boundless promise, it stood as a beacon that drew people from all over the country.

Today, after a decade of cascading failures and near oppressive disappointments, there’s a looming sense that California has descended into dreary mediocrity and is headed for imminent disaster.

We see the state’s population increase annually and think that represents growth, but that doesn’t tell the real tale. Despite new births and new immigrants (legal), which sustained California’s population growth over the last decade, fewer and fewer Americans were moving here, and more and more Californians were leaving.

Last year, California’s population rose less than 1 percent. Sacramento County’s growth rate was below 1 percent for the first time in 15 years, according to the state Department of Finance. Of the region’s other three counties, only Placer saw sizable growth.

But 2009 marked a more startling statistic: It was the fifth consecutive year that more residents left California than moved to California from other states.

“I hate what California has become,” says Lisa Duerr, a state worker and California native.

“I grew up during California’s ‘Golden Age,’ ” she recalls. “The best schools, the cutting edge of everything from culture to technology, the envy of the nation. I never imagined living anywhere else.”

Now, frustrated by high prices and tax dollars that support an entitlement attitude at the expense of the middle class, Duerr says, “I’m about 10 years from retirement and seriously considering moving out of state.”

Even as out-migration slowed nationwide due to limited employment prospects and a bleak housing picture brought on by the recession, nearly 100,000 residents left California last year, more than double the state’s out-migration during the milder recession of 2001.

From 2004 to 2008, 2.7 million Californians left for other states. Nevada, Oregon and Arizona were popular, but Texas and Idaho soon became destination hot spots.

Reasons for the exodus are many and familiar: A perennial budget mess, a laughable Legislature, waning public education, wasteful spending, cost of living, high taxes and the fear of tax increases. People gave up the California dream.

Last year, simple math made leaving California easy for Mike and Cindy Reilly: After moving from their three-bedroom home in Nipomo, south of San Luis Obispo, to a rural spread south of Denver, the taxes they pay, from property to personal, dropped by more than half.

“We both grew up in California,” says Cindy, 41, “but our dream was to own land.” They have 10 acres with plans to build a bigger home. “We couldn’t afford that in California.”

And after settling in, they quickly discovered something else: “Nobody here wants to leave. In California, it felt like everyone wanted to get out,” she says.

They still have ties here. Not wanting to sell for a loss, they rent out their California home. Cindy’s parents still live in Nipomo and Mike, a 39-year-old engineering contractor, often commutes to California for work. But the inconveniences that come with a major life change are worth the trade-off of waking up in Colorado.

In 2004, lifelong Californians Nathan and Melanie Fischer settled on suburban Kansas City. The thirty-something couple traded in their San Bernardino house for a five-bedroom home nearly twice the size, and they had enough money left after their move to pay off the debt on their two cars and buy a 21-foot motorboat. Dual incomes are no longer necessary. He works in the restaurant business while she stays home with their three children.

Their new neighbors were puzzled by the Fischers’ willingness to trade sunny California for tornado warnings and wind chill factors, but Melanie Fischer is philosophical about it: “You have to give up things to get things.”

They have no regrets.

Will more follow? In a 2008 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, about a third of residents under 35 years old said it was just too doggone expensive to live here, and two-thirds of those said they were thinking of leaving the state.

Many Californians are third- and fourth-generation residents whose families came here a century ago because of the promise of economic prosperity. Many went to public schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s when California’s education system was among the best in the nation.

We see a picture of decline in California’s physical, social and educational infrastructure against a backdrop of other states that have managed to avoid the kind of profound change for the worse that California has experienced. It’s easy to grow despondent and become pessimistic.

Would you leave if you could?

I thought for sure most of the Bee readers I contacted in an e-mail blast would answer that question with a resounding, “Hell, yes!” Instead, most offered an emphatic, “Hell, no!”

Some cited practical reasons: Tied to a job; tied to their house; a reduction in pension benefits if they moved.

Family came up. “I would only move if my daughter and her family were to move out of state,” Joyce Tucker in Fair Oaks wrote in an e-mail.

They mentioned the weather, culture, natural beauty and a bountiful agriculture.

Most were staying put – proudly, even defiantly.

Steve Russi lived in Colorado for a year and “could not wait to get back.” Operating a lumber company that turns underutilized timber into new wood products, he had just squelched an idea by his brother about locating a distribution point in Reno to lower business costs. “That’s like staying out of the party because everything isn’t perfect,” he said. “The action is here.”

He would know. His family has business roots in California going back five generations to the old orange groves in Claremont, east of Los Angeles.

Indeed, according to a Pew Research Center study, 69 percent of native adult residents still live here, a stability exceeded only by Texas, North Carolina and Georgia. For all the complaints about taxes and warnings that higher taxes would drive out wealthier Californians, Census Bureau figures show only four other states have a higher concentration of people with annual salaries of $200,000 or more: Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Art Shapiro, a University of California, Davis, professor, is reminded of the struggles faced by Argentina a generation ago. He’s been conducting a research program there since 1977, when the country was laid waste by a corrupt, ineffective government.

“A lot of the best people in the country emigrated under the military dictatorship, which was brutally anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic and anti-modernist. And a great many of them missed their country and loved it so much they came back once the regime was gone. I don’t think Californians are such hothouse flowers that they will get up and go because things have gotten a bit nasty. I certainly hope not. If the Argentines can rebuild a working democracy on the ruins of fascist dictatorship, there is lots of hope for California.”

Terry Meany, who just moved here from Washington state, echoes that optimism. “Some believe humans rise to their best efforts when things are at their worst,” he wrote. “I’m waiting for this to happen in California.”

Having done my share of sneering at the younger generation over their rap music (I despise the violence and misogyny), their sartorial style (“Pants on the Ground!”) and their seeming sense of entitlement ($40K a year isn’t enough for that first job?), I should acknowledge their continuing contributions to a culture that celebrates diversity and equality. Without the open-mindedness of the nation’s young adults, it’s unlikely that President Barack Obama would have been elected or that the Pentagon would be considering allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

Still, even young folks can stumble and become entangled in the old prejudices, rigid racial boundaries and cultural clichés. That seems to be the case with the controversy that erupted after a group of fancy-stepping white sorority sisters from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville – members of Zeta Tau Alpha – won an Atlanta dance competition sponsored by Sprite, the soft drink label, last month.

The Zeta Tau Alpha members were the only white competitors to make the national round of the step contest – “stepping” is a style created and dominated by black fraternities and sororities – and their victory hasn’t been universally celebrated. A bitter, racially tinged debate broke out over urban radio and in the blogosphere, with some charging that a black sorority was cheated out of a rightful victory.

Anthony Antoine, an AIDS prevention coordinator, inadvertently helped to spark the controversy when he posted a video of ZTA’s performance online. He had judged them winners, and he wanted to share the show with his girlfriend, who didn’t attend. He never expected a full-fledged racial fracas.

The vituperation has been “disheartening,” said Antoine, who is black. “If your reason for saying they shouldn’t have won is because they’re white, what does that say about where we are?”

After a few days of carping and condemnation, contest organizers suddenly discovered a “scoring discrepancy” and awarded a second first-place title to a black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, from Indiana University. Each team will receive $100,000 in scholarships.

I’m in favor of more college scholarships, so that’s hardly the worst outcome. And Sprite, which hoped for favorable attention to its label, can hardly be blamed for trying to douse the flames of a brush fire fueled by race. Yet, the “scoring discrepancy” – which Coca-Cola, Sprite’s parent company, has refused to explain – seems a bit odd.

After the performances ended, the judges deliberated for nearly an hour, Antoine said. “I was there when they noted the scoring had already been verified,” he said.

Besides, the competition could have been one of those eloquent “teaching moments” that combined several lessons for young adults. They might have been reminded, first off, that in the real world you don’t always get a trophy. Second, those who accused ZTA of “stealing” from black performers might have learned that cultural assimilation has always been a fact of life in this diverse country. (See Elvis Presley.) Indeed, some dance historians believe that tap dance grew out of 19th-century neighborhoods where free blacks and Irish immigrants lived in close proximity and combined native dance traditions.

But the most important lesson for the young folks is this: Dump your stereotypes. Racial prejudices are a symptom of a narrow mind, no more just or righteous when exhibited by blacks than by whites. You think white sorority members can’t dance? Isn’t that similar to suggesting that a black man can’t be a competent president?

This is a great country, and it has given birth to an awe-inspiring, only-in-America culture. White evangelicals can raise the rafters with their preaching; Shani Davis can win Olympic gold in speedskating; and I can criticize Marshall Mathers (Eminem) for the content of his lyrics, not the color of his skin.

The step show is scheduled for broadcast at 3 p.m. Sunday on cable channel MTV2.

So the Bunning blockade is over. For days, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., exploited Senate rules to block a one-month extension of unemployment benefits. In the end, he gave in, although not soon enough to prevent an interruption of payments to around 100,000 workers.

But while the blockade is over, its lessons remain. Some of those lessons involve the spectacular dysfunctionality of the Senate. What I want to focus on right now, however, is the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties. Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.

Take the question of helping the unemployed in the middle of a deep slump. What Democrats believe is what textbook economics says: that when the economy is deeply depressed, extending unemployment benefits not only helps those in need, it also reduces unemployment. That’s because the economy’s problem right now is lack of sufficient demand, and cash-strapped unemployed workers are likely to spend their benefits. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office says that aid to the unemployed is one of the most effective forms of economic stimulus, as measured by jobs created per dollar of outlay.

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): Unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” In Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now – with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression – is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view – but then, I don’t live in Kyl’s universe.

And the difference between the two universes isn’t just intellectual, it’s also moral.

Bill Clinton famously told a suffering constituent, “I feel your pain.” But the thing is, he did and does – while many other politicians clearly don’t. Or perhaps it would be fairer to say that the parties feel the pain of different people.

During the debate over unemployment benefits, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., made a plea for action on behalf of those in need. In response, Bunning blurted out an expletive. That was undignified – but not that different, in substance, from the position of leading Republicans. Consider, in particular, the position that Kyl has taken on a proposed bill that would extend unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies for the jobless for the rest of the year.

Republicans will block that bill, said Kyl, unless they get a “path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.

Now, the House has already passed a bill that, by exempting the assets of couples up to $7 million, would leave 99.75 percent of estates tax-free. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Kyl; he’s willing to hold up desperately needed aid to the unemployed on behalf of the remaining 0.25 percent. That’s a very clear statement of priorities.

So, as I said, the parties now live in different universes, both intellectually and morally. We can ask how that happened; there, too, the parties live in different worlds. Republicans would say that it’s because Democrats have moved sharply left: a Republican National Committee fundraising plan acquired by Politico suggests motivating donors by promising to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

I’d say that it’s because Republicans have moved hard to the right, furiously rejecting ideas they used to support. Indeed, the Obama health care plan strongly resembles past GOP plans. But again, I don’t live in their universe.

More important, however, what are the implications of this total divergence in views? The answer, of course, is that bipartisanship is now a foolish dream. How can the parties agree on policy when they have utterly different visions of how the economy works, when one party feels for the unemployed, while the other weeps over affluent victims of the “death tax”? Which brings us to the central political issue right now: health care reform. If Congress enacts reform in the next few weeks – and the odds are growing that it will – it will do so without any Republican votes. Some people will decry this, insisting that President Barack Obama should have tried harder to gain bipartisan support. But that isn’t going to happen, on health care or anything else, for years to come. Someday, somehow, we as a nation will once again find ourselves living on the same planet. But for now, we aren’t. And that’s just the way it is.

Dave Jones

Re “Blame game is a weak card to play” (Editorial, Feb. 25): The recent Assembly Health Committee hearing on health insurance rate hikes produced new evidence of the need for health insurance rate regulation.

Anthem Blue Cross announced last month an up to 39 percent increase in health insurance rates. They are not alone. Californians have suffered year after year with double-digit health insurance rate hikes. It’s no wonder that there are 6.7 million Californians without health insurance.

I scheduled a hearing of the Assembly Health Committee to investigate the rate hikes. Despite agreeing to provide documents related to the company’s decision to increase premiums four days before the hearing, Blue Cross did not provide any documents until the night before the hearing. Blue Cross also withheld documents responsive to our request. This made it extremely difficult for a meaningful analysis prior to our hearing.

Nonetheless, the Assembly Health Committee hearing produced important information. Blue Cross executives admitted that they expect approximately 250,000 individual policyholders to disenroll in conjunction with the rate increases. Witnesses testified that Blue Cross made $3 billion in profits that they passed on to their out-of-state parent company WellPoint from 2007 to 2009. WellPoint made $4.7 billion in profits last year alone.

We also learned that Blue Cross has hundreds of millions of dollars in surpluses far in excess of what regulators require. All of this evidence undercuts Blue Cross’ assertion that it needs to raise rates yet again. Interestingly, Blue Cross executives refused to answer questions about their own compensation, bonuses and stock options.

Information obtained at the Assembly Health Committee hearing was used by members of Congress in their hearing the next day. And The Bee used testimony obtained during our hearing in its editorial.

In light of Blue Cross’ failure to produce documents and refusal to answer certain questions, I requested that the Assembly issue a subpoena for this information.

Although Blue Cross’ obstructionism made our work more difficult, we had a successful hearing that informed the public and the Legislature about the rate hikes and the need for a legislative response. Blue Cross officials told us they intend to move forward with their rate hikes May 1. Other health insurers have announced dramatic rate hikes as well.

Californians should be protected from unjustifiable rate increases. We need to pass my Assembly Bill 2578 to ensure that the state regulates health insurance rates and rejects unjustifiable rate increases.

Raynia Kinniston, 95, restocks supplies Friday in the emergency department at Mercy General Hospital. She’s logged about 47,000 hours at the hospital.

Raynia Kinniston, still a pistol at 95 years young, puts nearly every other volunteer to shame.

On Wednesday afternoon, she was doing her regular shift at Mercy General Hospital’s gift shop after finishing her regular shift restocking supplies in the emergency room.

And I do mean regular.

On April 1, she’ll celebrate 50 years of service at the hospital on J Street. She will have logged some 47,000 hours, the equivalent of more than two decades of full-time work.

Like clockwork three days a week, she takes the bus from her Land Park home to Mercy, where she starts in the emergency room. Sometimes, a patient is rushed in while she’s there, so she comforts them with water or juice or a blanket – if a nurse gives permission, she’s careful to say. “I’ve been there when they’ve lost people,” she says.

In the afternoon, she works at the lobby information desk or helps run the gift shop.

“She’s a taskmaster, she cracks the whip,” her partner there, Bebe Wright, says with a laugh.

Wright is no slouch herself, having volunteered at the hospital for 10 years, but says, “I’m a short timer. No one compares to Raynia.”

Kinniston, while she wears her hospital service pin with pride on her pink smock, says Mercy has “given a lot more to me than I have given to it. I’ve had a lot of happy times.”

Her connection to the hospital, though, is even more personal, and somewhat sad. Her husband died there in 1954 from stomach cancer. For his final four months, she says, she spent every day at the hospital. Her son was born there, but she was volunteering in the gift shop seven years ago when she found out he had died of a massive heart attack.

“A lot of my life transpired there,” she says.

Her service has not gone unnoticed. Last year, Shawn Anderson, a motivational speaker from San Diego, awarded her one of 10 “Extra Mile” prizes nationwide. Also last year, Mayor Kevin Johnson had Kinniston at his side to promote his volunteerism drive.

Last week, the mayor invited her to his State of the City speech and had her stand up to be recognized.

“This is the best of Sacramento, it truly is,” Johnson said, urging Sacramentans to double their volunteer hours from 1.5 million last year to 3 million this year. The 850 Sacramento Metro Chamber members and guests rose to give Kinniston a standing ovation, bringing her to tears.

Even after reaching the half-century milestone, she has no plans to stop volunteering. “I’m going to do it as long as I can,” she says. “That’s what’s really keeping me going.”

– [email protected]

Smoke from fires and smog soil a Sacramento sunset. A new study says the
state’s dirty air cost $193 million over three years in hospital visits alone.

Numerous studies have proved that dirty air causes serious health problems, such as asthma, lung and heart disease, and premature death.

Therefore, one cannot help but conclude that dirty air must play a significant role in driving up the burgeoning health care costs in California – costs that taxpayers, employers and insurance providers have been forced to bear.

Until now, the exact amount this is costing the health care industry had not been quantified, but a new study released by the Rand Corp. this week shows us, for the first time, just how significant this cost is to the private health insurance companies and taxpayer-funded health plans in California.

The report found that dirty air has cost private and public health care plans $193 million over a three-year period in hospital admissions and emergency room visits only. And this does not include the cost of medical care for chronic problems caused by dirty air, such as asthma or lung disease.

Public health plans funded by taxpayers, such as Medicare and Medi-Cal, are faced with the largest burden. However, private health plans, including Kaiser Permanente, Secure Horizons (part of United Healthcare) and Blue Cross of California are also affected, with a large bill for hospitalizations due to air pollution.

These costs are felt across the entire state, but some areas incur greater spending than others do, especially in the Los Angeles area and the San Joaquin Valley – where the air quality is ranked among the worst in the nation. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the majority of the costs incurred for health problems related to dirty air by private and public health plans are concentrated in these two areas.

At a time when out-of-control health costs are a major contributor to our state’s economic paralysis, we must look at all means of saving money while investing in a better future. There are much more efficient ways for private and public health plans to spend $193 million.

For example, we could provide mammograms to every California woman age 40 to 64 who is uninsured or on Medi-Cal. Another wise investment would be to provide flu shots for eight out of every 10 kids in California under age 15, or we could provide primary care checkups to every uninsured Californian under age 15.

Besides reinvesting these funds in a more equitable way, there is also a more practicable solution: If lawmakers ensure that California meets the federal clean-air standards sooner rather than later, then the health and economic pitfalls caused by dirty air become preventable and a non-issue.

Given these tough economic times, it is easy for lawmakers to say, “There is no money,” and stick to the age-old remedies of trying to balance the budget and stave off economic crisis.

But if we do not start adopting new measures for dealing with the problems that continue to plague California, all we are doing is using Band-Aids to try to stop major bleeds.

The cost of inaction is too great, and it is time we realize that we have as much of an economic problem as a health problem when it comes to air quality control. According to a study released last year by California State University, Fullerton, California’s economy loses $28 billion every year in the form of lost work days, illness and premature death due to dirty air, something the state is in no position to let happen.

Meeting federal clean-air standards would ensure that Californians are healthier and more productive, and would save millions each year. We must resist the temptation to do nothing while taxpayers and businesses are losing millions and gasping for relief.

Mervyn M. Dymally

After decades, voters in Sacramento’s north area finally created a new Twin Rivers Unified School District in 2007 – merging three elementary districts and a high school district.

Ordinarily, a new board would begin with short, staggered terms: some serving a one-year term and others serving a two-year term.

But to provide stability, the State Board of Education granted the startup district a waiver, saying: “the initial terms of the trustees shall be four years, unless the governing board by resolution consolidates the election of the governing board members with the statewide general election, and then the initial terms of the trustees shall be three years.”

The choice was clear between holding the scheduled odd-year election in November 2011, at a cost of $450,000, and moving to an even-year election in November 2010, at a cost of $50,000.

The Sacramento County registrar of voters urged the new district in April 2009 to move the election, concluding: “Should your district choose to consolidate with the statewide general election, all seven trustee areas will stand for election in November 2010.”

Yet in 10 months the board has taken no action. The deadline for 240-day notice to the county is Monday. The board belatedly will take up the issue on Thursday – too late to get the election on the November 2010 ballot.

But it seems the district may have something up its sleeve. Some boards, including Davis Joint Unified and Woodland Joint Unified, have used Election Code 10404.5 to create a one-time five-year term to move elections to even years.

It is fundamentally undemocratic for current officeholders to unilaterally extend their own terms. Lawmakers need to change that flawed law immediately. Until then, boards – including Twin Rivers – should reject its use.

If it fails to make the Monday deadline for this year’s election, Twin Rivers should stick with its scheduled election in 2011 – and voters should remember the added cost.

Daniel Simmons

The University of California is witnessing some of the most difficult circumstances in its history.

Budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and salary reduction, and increases in student fees, coupled with the economic uncertainty faced by the state and nation, have generated anxiety and tensions for people in all walks of life.

Political and religious turmoil add pressure to this vessel of uncertainty. In the middle of it all, the UC system is faced with internal attacks that disrupt the fabric of reasoned and sensitive debate.

The racist behavior by individuals at UC San Diego is one of the most recent manifestations. At UC Davis, someone carved a swastika on the door of a Jewish student. Organized protesters at UC Irvine disrupted the exercise of speech with a systematic attempt to deny a speaker his right to be heard and an audience its right to listen. Mobs have thrown burning missiles at a chancellor’s residence when he and his spouse were asleep inside. Protesters have occupied buildings and destroyed university property, all of which increase demands for security and maintenance expenditures at a time when core activities are being cut.

Angry protesters frequently attempt to bar the Board of Regents from conducting its business and in fact have physically restrained individuals attending board meetings. Many students believe that all of this activity causes their voices to be heard. The cacophony is palpable. None of this helps to solve the problems caused by state budget cuts nor advances the cause of California higher education.

Many university leaders, myself included, condemn the behavior of some individuals at UC San Diego. Stupid and insensitive manifestations of racism have no place in a community based on learning and discovery. I also reject the idea that these acts are a reflection of the culture of the San Diego campus community. I condemn the destructive behavior of individuals that seems to be snowballing across the campuses.

Nonetheless, the university must recognize the rights and needs for all persons to be able to express their views, even views that we find abhorrent. By protecting the right to speak of the most obnoxious members of the community, we protect our own rights to express our views. The university is a rich and valuable enterprise only because of the diversity of views, cultures, races, religions, and ideas that thrive within the community.

Most important, in order for the academic enterprise to thrive, or even to survive, members of the community must adopt a manner of discourse, however passionate, that reflects civil behavior and sensitivity to the views and passions of others.

Participants in the educational enterprise must be willing to learn from the divergent speech, viewpoints and cultures of others that is the hallmark of the University of California. Students, faculty, and staff must all be willing to grow by the accumulation of uncensored knowledge so that each of us can assess the difficult issues that we face in the cauldron of uncertainty that marks recent history. Nooses, vandalism, rocks, setting fires, do not spread knowledge; indeed, their intent is the opposite, to stop learning and restrain discovery.

We all should learn to respect the divergent views of people we encounter within and outside of the university and our own communities.

Embrace someone who is different from yourself, introduce yourself, and say you are my brother or my sister and we will walk through this world together.

Linda P.B. Katehi

I grew up in a working-class town on a small Greek island in the 1950s, where the idea of going to college was beyond our wildest dreams.

Our town was home to families still recovering from World War II and the devastation of Nazi atrocities and genocide. My parents, very poor and without any college education themselves, barely survived to start a family. And at the time, Greek institutions of higher education were all private and charged more for a single quarter of classes than my father made in a year.

Only when the Greek government made colleges public and tuition-free in the 1960s was I able to pursue my dreams, first an engineering degree in Greece, then graduate training at UCLA, made possible by public as well as private philanthropic support.

And so, as university leaders and students organize this week in Sacramento and across the state to speak out about access, affordability and other issues critical to the future of public higher education, these matters are intensely personal for me.

No state has as much to lose as California if we do not act quickly to reprioritize our commitment to higher education for our children, our long-term economic well-being and ourselves. Consider that between 1950 and 1967, California invested 22 percent of all state spending in public services and public infrastructure. The investment created one of the world’s greatest public higher education systems.

Today, six of the University of California’s 10 campuses, including Davis, are members of the prestigious Association of American Universities, a designation reserved for the leading research institutions in the United States and Canada. My own campus is known worldwide, especially for its contributions to global agriculture, animal and human health and its cutting-edge innovations in energy efficiency.

This academic excellence is no accident. It is the fruit of generations of sacrifice and investment by Americans in their children’s futures, beginning with the federal Morrill Act of 1863, which created the land grant universities (including UC Davis, founded in 1908) and continuing through California’s transformative Master Plan for Education, unveiled in 1960.

Now, in stark contrast, the University of California has seen its state funding per student fall by 50 percent since 1990. In the past year alone, total state funding for UC was slashed by 20 percent. As a consequence, at UC Davis we’ve had to cope with a cumulative budget shortfall of $150 million since July 2008 (including a $115 million shortfall since May 2009). The California Community Colleges system anticipates a cut in enrollment of more than 250,000 students. And California State University anticipates a cut of 40,000 students.

Unlike the planning and investment that catapulted the University of California to worldwide pre-eminence, today’s financial crisis for higher education is a result of unintended consequences that can be traced back to June 6, 1978, when an overwhelming majority of California voters approved Proposition 13. The result has been a steady disinvestment in the state’s future.

Proposition 13 rolled back property assessments to 1975 market value levels and stipulated that they could not be raised more than 2 percent in any fiscal year. More importantly, it mandated that actual property taxes could not exceed more than 1 percent of a property’s cash value, authorizing the state Legislature to determine how those taxes would be apportioned among the many competing public purposes.

California has long led the nation in its number of gated communities that provide their own public services, exemplifying a view of government services as a private choice, as if one could review potential government programs the way one would check off options on a cable television plan.

Lost in this privatized version of government is the sense of communal belonging, of obligation to any social entity larger than the self, and of any responsibility to future generations.

If ever this state and nation needed to formulate a long-range plan for the future of its higher education system, now is the time. At the recent World Universities Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I spoke about the need for a Morrill Act for the 21st century and for the federal government’s reinvestment in public higher education. And California must reassert the genius and vision of our own master plan for higher education through increased state investment.

It is time that we match the commitments made by our parents, a generation that built this country for the benefit of their children, for our children and for our children’s children.

Today we must choose the sacrifice of collective investment in the public research university as a shared good leading to continued national prosperity and security, rather than the shrunken, caste-bound future of the privatized university.

Today, even in the face of a lingering recession and two wars, is the time for renewed sacrifice for the benefit of future students.

Today is the right time, our time, to begin the building.

California has been very, very good to Toyota. But the world’s biggest automaker is about to kick the state when it’s down.

Come April 1, Toyota plans to abandon the Fremont factory that once was the shining example of the “Toyota way” and labor-management cooperation.

After 25 years, the demise of New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., California’s last auto plant, is a symbolic blow.

But it is more than that. It will also cost about 4,700 jobs at the plant and threaten perhaps 20,000 more at suppliers and other related businesses – a punch to the gut for a state already reeling with more than 2 million people out of work. It will be the single biggest layoff in California since the recession began in December 2007.

In these tough times, this is not how a company that cares so much about its image should treat a state to which it owes much of its success.

Nearly 25 percent of all new cars sold in California last year were Toyota brands, and the state accounts for about 20 percent of Toyota’s U.S. sales. The roaring success of its Prius hybrid is based largely on early enthusiasm by Californians.

Toyota says NUMMI is no longer economically viable, and it is entitled to make hard-eyed decisions, just like any other business. Still, the move seems particularly shortsighted when it is being flogged daily over accelerator and other safety problems.

To ease the pain and not coincidentally help on the public relations side, Toyota announced Wednesday it will give $250 million to workers who stay until the bitter end. That may seem generous. But those bonuses averaging $50,000 will quickly run out if the workers – on average 45 years old with 13 years at the plant – can’t find new jobs. And the largess is a tiny percentage of Toyota’s profits, $1.7 billion just for the last three months of 2009 and about $65 billion between 2004 and 2008.

Toyota’s announcement countered the release of a report by a “blue ribbon commission” led by state Treasurer Bill Lockyer that sought to rebut the company’s case for pulling out. The report argues that the vehicles made at NUMMI, particularly the Corolla, are still selling well; that the factory is operating well; and that Toyota is not in dire financial trouble. The plant could be even more competitive by producing more hybrid and plug-in vehicles.

Lockyer, himself a Prius owner, notes that the state has made an extra effort to help the plant, spending millions on worker training and dredging at the Port of Oakland.

By contrast, the federal government hasn’t done California any favors. General Motors, Toyota’s partner in NUMMI, withdrew from the joint venture last August, after the government took control as part of GM’s bankruptcy. President Barack Obama, who keeps saying he’s focused on creating jobs, hasn’t stepped up to save the plant. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been rather silent, as well.

It’s not too late for Toyota to change its mind. If it did so, it could help rebuild loyalty among California customers that has been shaken in recent weeks.

If, however, Toyota closes NUMMI, it shouldn’t be shocked if fewer Californians show up in its showrooms.

There’s no sugarcoating the news. California failed to be a finalist in the first round of the competition among the states for federal Race to the Top grants.

Sixteen of 41 states that applied made the first cut, as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Thursday.

At this stage, there’s no point in dwelling on failure. There’s no time to waste to do the work that will put California in a more competitive position for the second round – with applications due in June.

The states won’t know until the first-round winners are announced in April how they scored out of 500 possible points, or what their strengths and weaknesses were.

But as Kathryn Radtkey-Gaither, undersecretary in the governor’s Office of Education, said Thursday, California can begin work on legislation it already passed and “ask everyone what they would do to make the application stronger.”

In the next three months, California can work harder to bring more school districts and more teachers unions on board. When the application was submitted in mid-January, 804 of the state’s 1,729 districts (representing 58 percent of the state’s students) had signed on to participate. And of those districts, only 26 percent of teachers unions signed on. California can do better.

The state also can show by its actions that it is moving forward with using data to determine student needs and measure teacher effectiveness; focusing its standards to get beyond the “mile wide, inch deep” criticism of current standards; taking real steps to turn around historically low-performing schools; putting outstanding teachers and principals where they are needed most.

The second round in the competition won’t be easy. The current finalists who don’t win in April will be back in the pool.

If California wants to be in the race, it must demonstrate it really wants to win. Thursday’s disappointing announcement serves one good purpose: It should bring an end to California smugness and complacency about its education system and what it will take to really reform it.

Micah Weinberg

Who could have guessed that Leslie Margolin, the president of Anthem Blue Cross, would become the poster child for health care reform?

When President Barack Obama unveiled his final reform plan this week, he mentioned how Anthem was planning to raise premiums by as much as 39 percent. These rate spikes may provide the momentum that pushes this seemingly never-ending effort over the finish line.

Still, when I think about the path forward on federal health care reform and what its passage or failure may mean, I don’t think about Ms. Margolin.

I think of Todd, a friend of mine in Austin.

Stories like Todd’s, though heartbreaking, have become all too familiar. A 35-year old filmmaker, he had health insurance through his partner, who lost her job in the economic downturn. Just as their COBRA benefits were about to run out, Todd learned that he has multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1, a rare, inherited disorder of the endocrine system. It creates cancerous tumors but can be controlled through extensive and costly treatment. Needless to say, this pre-existing condition prevents him from being able to purchase insurance, which is why he asked me not to use his last name.

Just because people like Todd exist does not mean that we are morally obligated to pass the bills pending before Congress. But we are all obligated, I believe, to be as forthright as possible in evaluating what passage or failure will mean for Todd and for us all.

What is the situation as it stands? Obama’s final plan incorporates many Republican ideas advanced at the bipartisan summit last week, but the passage of health care reform is not likely to incorporate any Republicans.

Republicans have gone “all in” in opposition to the bill and are promising to block it through a series of parliamentary maneuvers. But they’re bluffing. If the Democrats can secure 216 votes in the House and 50 votes in the Senate (Vice President Joe Biden would break the tie), they can pass health care reform on their own.

The procedure to do this is called “reconciliation,” the same type of majority vote that was used to pass welfare reform, children’s health insurance and both Bush tax cuts. It’s unclear, however, if Democrats have even a majority of votes. A major sticking issue is abortion. Some house Democrats led by Bart Stupak of Michigan have pledged to switch to voting “no” if they decide the final bill includes too few restrictions on federal funding for this procedure.

What would passage mean for people with pre-existing conditions who cannot currently get coverage? Financial assistance for buying insurance does not kick in for several years, but insurance companies would immediately be required to sell policies to everyone regardless of their health status. The bill expands “high-risk pools” for people who are not able to afford insurance right now. There are also special provisions for people with cancer to help ensure that they get the treatment that they need as soon as possible.

What if federal health care reform stalls? One option is to pursue an “incremental” approach, passing only those things that command broad agreement. Though appealing, this approach does not stand up to scrutiny. First, the elements of the current bill continue to poll as the most popular even as the process has led the public to be dissatisfied with the overall effort. Further, we’ve been pursuing an incremental strategy since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. If we keep doing what we’ve done, we’re going to keep getting what we’ve got.

If an incremental approach included high-risk pools, it could provide near-term help to people who need care but cannot buy insurance. But the expansion of high-risk pools (and other proposals such as buying insurance across state lines and medical malpractice reforms) would not change the bad incentives that cause insurers to discriminate against the sick.

If, on the other hand, we deal with only the issue of pre-existing conditions without including the other elements of comprehensive reform such as the individual mandate, this could cause premiums to skyrocket, making the recent Anthem rate increases seem modest in comparison.

The final option, therefore, is to take another approach to comprehensive reform starting, as the Republicans suggest, with a “blank sheet of paper.” But all the other non-incremental proposals, such as the Republican “blueprint” that would privatize Medicare, are deeply unpopular political non-starters.

The bipartisan summit revealed that everyone finally agrees that doing nothing is no longer an option. We can still, and may well, walk away from this particular approach to comprehensive health care reform and try something else. But as we have gotten this far, we owe it to ourselves to step back one last time and ask the question, “Will we really be better off?”

Thomas Klipstine

In 1983, the announcement that GM and Toyota had reached an agreement in principle to produce a small car in Fremont was the proverbial shot heard round the automotive world.

GM and Toyota together? Throw in the UAW and the result was a unique but somewhat controversial company known as NUMMI.

I worked at NUMMI from 1984 to 1989. Back then, “experiment” was the word we used to describe the company. The joint venture was originally conceived to find if Toyota production methods could work using American labor and suppliers.

But it was so much more. The concept involved management, labor, government, suppliers and most importantly, two distinct cultures coming together in support of one specific goal: to produce a quality product at a reasonable cost.

The phrase “best of both worlds” was used many times to describe what was taking place in Fremont. It seemed like such a simple, reasonable concept at the time. A sure win-win situation.

For Toyota, which would manage the day-to-day operations, the joint venture was an opportunity to gain valuable experience working with American suppliers and labor. In addition, it gave Toyota a quick, low-risk presence in the United States, which defused some concern about the growing negative trade balance.

GM’s objectives were somewhat different in that GM would get the product, a small, high-quality car sold through Chevrolet that would compete directly with the imports. In addition, GM would gain experience with the production system, which could produce vehicles at a cost estimated to be $2,000 less than U.S. companies.

For the UAW the joint venture meant jobs, some 2,500 in the beginning. It also allowed the UAW to gain experience in working with Toyota and participation in what Fortune magazine called at the time the “most important labor relations experiment in the U.S. today.” It was not an easy startup by any means. Toyota’s commitment to quality was relentless. A Chrysler lawsuit threatened to halt production. Former GM workers were hired and many were trained in Japan and a new, unique labor contract, based on mutual trust and respect, was finalized and implemented.

Suppliers also needed to be selected and trained in specific quality requirements and the new just-in-time system. It was very obvious to everyone it was simply not going to be business as usual.

Now, some 26 years later, the “experiment” is over. And I guess the question is, “Did it work?”

For GM, which wanted the car and the opportunity to learn from Toyota, the answer I believe is very clear. GM had trouble selling the car from the very beginning, and Toyota products quickly took up the slack in production. While GM did try to implement various aspects of the system in its own facilities, the task proved to be nearly impossible. For obvious reasons, last summer GM had to abandon Fremont for the second time.

The UAW got its chance to work with a foreign manufacturer. While the jobs created in Fremont were the most important aspect for the UAW, it is worth noting that organized labor has not made many inroads with Toyota or any other foreign manufacturer.

Toyota, which I always felt had the most to gain in Fremont, used the plant as a major steppingstone in becoming basically the largest auto company in the world. As Toyota gained experience, it established its own facilities and its brand has simply flourished.

From the very beginning it was always said the future of the company was to be decided in the marketplace, meaning for the experiment to survive, the company had to continuously build a high-quality product at a reasonable cost.

I guess that is the key to the answer. While Fremont’s quality has never really been questioned, we must assume that cost is the main issue. In its announcement, Toyota noted that NUMMI was not financially viable, production costs in Fremont were too high and “overcapacity” was mentioned more than once.

For me, Toyota’s words in its news release and statements had a very familiar tone. Words such as “overcapacity” and “high production costs” were basically invented by American auto manufactures and have been used far too often. And Fremont has heard it all before.

So what was gained from the NUMMI experiment? GM and the UAW certainly did not benefit as much as planned, possibly due to inflated expectations.

Toyota got the American experience it wanted but may have sacrificed its heritage and fundamental philosophies and became too Americanized in its overall operations.

It was an experiment, but at some point the learning stopped and in the end NUMMI became less of an experiment and more just another American manufacturer focused on bottom-line results. NUMMI, unfortunately, then became a victim to those dreaded American words – “overcapacity” and “not financially viable.”

So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.

After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.

The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House “summit” with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans’ way.

“Show” is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Barack Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of Obama’s health care bill.

As for the Blair House seminar, its theatrical quality was obvious even before it began. The Democrats had already decided to go for a purely partisan bill. Obama signaled precisely that intent at the end of the summit show – then dramatically spelled it out just six days later in his 35th health care speech: He is going for the party-line vote.

Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections – contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.

Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments), they are in favor.

Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be? Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: A dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.

However (life is a vale of howevers), suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed – say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers, 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak was to be cooked. How do you think this would poll? Perhaps something like 3 to 1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health care bills.

Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.

Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

Which is what drove even strong Obama supporter Warren Buffett to go public with his judgment that the current Senate bill, while better than nothing, is a failure because the country desperately needs to bend the cost curve down and the bill doesn’t do it. Buffett’s advice would be to start over and get it right.

Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation’s seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington’s wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of “budget reconciliation” – a maneuver that one of the original authors of the process, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, calls a clear violation of the spirit and intent of the law.

The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.

Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.

I was traveling via Los Angeles International Airport – LAX – last week. Walking through its faded, cramped domestic terminal, I got the feeling of a place that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore. In some ways, LAX is us. We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch.

And this contrast is playing out in the worst way – just slowly enough so the crisis never seems acute enough to take urgent action. But eventually, infrastructure, education and innovation policies matter. Businesses prefer to invest with the Jetsons more than the Flintstones, which brings me to the subject of this column.

I had a chance last week to listen to Paul Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, the microchip maker and one of America’s crown jewel companies. Otellini was in Washington to talk about competitiveness at Brookings and the Aspen Institute. At a time when so much of our public policy discussion is dominated by health care and bailouts, my public service for the week is to share Otellini’s views on start-ups.

While America still has the quality work force, political stability and natural resources a company like Intel needs, said Otellini, the United States is badly lagging in developing the next generation of scientific talent and incentives to induce big multinationals to create lots more jobs here.

“The things that are not conducive to investments here are (corporate) taxes and capital equipment credits,” he said. “A new semiconductor factory at world scale built from scratch is about $4.5 billion in the United States. If I build that factory in almost any other country in the world where they have significant incentive programs, I could save $1 billion,” because of the tax breaks these governments throw in.

Not surprisingly, the last factory Intel built from scratch was in China. “That comes online in October,” he said. “And it wasn’t because the labor costs are lower. Yeah, the construction costs were a little bit lower, but the cost of operating when you look at it after tax was substantially lower, and you have local market access.”

These local incentives matter, because smart, skilled labor is everywhere now. Intel can thrive today – not just survive – but thrive and never hire another American. Asked if his company was being held back by weak science and math education in America’s K-12 schools, Otellini explained: “As a citizen, I hate it. As a global employer, I have the luxury of hiring the best engineers anywhere on earth. If I can’t get them out of MIT, I’ll get them out of Tsing Hua” – Beijing’s MIT.

It gets worse. Otellini noted that a 2009 study done by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and cited recently in Democracy Journal “ranked the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness – not great, but not bad. That same study also measured what they call ‘the rate of change in innovation capacity’ over the last decade – in effect, how much countries were doing to make themselves more innovative for the future.

“The study relied on 16 different metrics of human capital – IT infrastructure, economic performance and so on. On this scale, the U.S. ranked dead last out of the same 40 nations. … When you take a hard look at the things that make any country competitive, we are slipping.”

If the government just boosted the research and development tax credit by 5 percent and lowered corporate taxes, argued Otellini, and we “started one or two more projects in companies around the country that made them more productive and more competitive, the government’s tax revenues are going to grow.” With the generous research and development tax credits and lower corporate taxes they receive, Intel’s chief competitors in South Korea basically have “zero cost of money,” said Otellini. Intel can compete against that with superior technology, but many other U.S. firms can’t.

Does the Obama team get it? Otellini compared the Obama administration to a “diode” – an electronic device that conducts electric current in only one direction. They are very good at listening to Silicon Valley, he said, but not so good at responding.

“I’d like to see competitiveness and education take a higher role than they are today,” he said. “Right now, they’re going to try to push this health care thing over the line, and, after that, deal with the next thing. God, I’d just like this (our competitiveness) to be the next thing. Something has to pay for” everything government is doing today.

We had to do the bailouts, the buy-ups and the jobs bills to stop the bleeding. But now we need to focus on the policies that spawn new firms and keep our best at the top.

“Having run a company through a major transition, it’s a lot easier to change when you can than when you have to,” Otellini said. “The cost is less. You have more time. I am a little worried that by the time we wake up to the crisis, we will be in the abyss.”

Wondering why the state Department of Transportation does such an uneven job of delivering highway and bridge projects quickly and efficiently? Part of the answer rests in a report released Tuesday by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The LAO zeroed in on Caltrans’ Capital Outlay Support program, which has more than 10,000 positions, many of which can’t be justified.

“The cumulative evidence from our review shows that the program is overstaffed and lacks strong management,” the report stated.

By eliminating 1,500 of those positions, the LAO estimates the state could save $200 million yearly.

That money comes from special state and federal funds, so it couldn’t be used to bridge the shortfall in the state’s general fund. But it could be used for project construction, speeding up work that would benefit motorists, local governments and transit users.

Public employee unions responded in predictable fashion to the report. Bruce Blanning, who heads Professional Engineers in State Government, called the findings “outrageous” and suggested that Caltrans was too busy with projects to provide the LAO with sufficient justification for all of its positions.

Nice try, Bruce. The LAO pretty much nailed why Caltrans is bloated beyond reason. Costs for the Capital Outlay Program “regularly exceeded the norm,” and were higher than costs incurred by similar state and local transportation agencies.

And furloughs? Did that affect the output of this $2 billion program? Nope.

“The imposition of furloughs … appears to have had no identifiable impact on its productivity, further suggesting that the department is overstaffed for these activities,” the report said.

The professional engineers union spends big bucks in the Capitol, which is one reason lawmakers have bloated this Caltrans program and protected it from cuts. Yet in these tight times, that protection must come to an end. That will only happen if enough motorists, taxpayers and voters send lawmakers the strongest possible message.

In assessing Sacramento’s plan to enact development fees to fund transportation projects, the issue isn’t the fees themselves. The city needs the cash for road and transit improvements to keep the city livable, and the fees are a fair way to help pay for growth.

The real issue is how much the fees should be and when they should start.

On both those scores, city officials are on the right track. They are outlining fees based on the traffic a new building would generate, and are recommending that they be phased in over several years, wary of doing anything to forestall economic recovery.

Most cities in the region already have a citywide development fee for transportation. The fees that Sacramento officials proposed this week would apply only to new houses, stores, office buildings and other development, and the amounts would be competitive with Sacramento County, Elk Grove, Folsom and West Sacramento, according to comparisons put together by the city. And when other developer fees are included, the cost of building in Sacramento would still be less.

For instance, the fee would be $6,251 for a single-family house in Sacramento, bringing the total development fees to $30,359. That compares to total development “exactions” of $90,760 at North Vineyard Station in Sacramento County, $89,690 at Laguna Ridge in Elk Grove, $71,130 at Southport in West Sacramento and $61,980 at Broadstone in Folsom.

For an apartment building of 10 floors or less, the transportation fee in Sacramento would be $3,572 per unit.

To encourage mass transit and affordable housing, developers would get discounts – 25 percent less for projects near transit centers and 42.5 percent for affordable housing.

The fees would raise more than $700 million over 20 years, and would be used to draw state and federal money.

According to regional transportation plans through 2035, Sacramento is projected to add 200,000 people and to need nearly $2.6 billion – or $115 million a year – for transportation projects. They include major proposals such as the $115 million Sutter Landing Parkway, the $100 million widening of Cosumnes River Boulevard and $100 million for a new bridge spanning the Sacramento River.

While roadways would get about two-thirds of the money, transit expansions would get 15 percent, 10 percent would fund traffic signal improvements and another 10 percent would go to bike trails and walkways.

In April, the transportation fee proposal will go before the council’s Law and Legislation Committee. The full council could vote on an ordinance as soon as May. The fees are not in the upcoming budget, so the earliest they would take effect would be in mid-2011. Under one scenario, the fees would start at about 30 percent of their final amounts.

Inevitably, some developers will complain loudly and warn darkly of higher prices for homebuyers and damage to the economy. But for taxpayers, it only makes sense that developers pay their fair share; the general principle that “growth pays for growth” is a good one.

Council members should make sure the fees are sized and timed right. But they need to move forward.

UC Berkeley students protest proposed fee hikes last fall. On Thursday, protests are planned at UC and CSU campuses.

Sometimes I think there are two Californias out there. One of them is the California of small things and small thinking. It’s the California that is obsessed with petty anti-tax politics. The one that wants to gut social programs and dismantle our public higher education system. It thrives on driving wedges between us and promoting divisiveness.

It’s the California of Proposition 187 (cutting services to illegal immigrants), Nixon, Reagan and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It includes a lot of people who hate government but are the first to complain when the garbage isn’t picked up.

The other California is the California of bold ideas and dreams of a better future. It’s the California that wants to conserve and protect its unique and beautiful state parks and wilderness, wishes to invest in its people and seeks common ground amid diversity.

It’s the California of Proposition 215 (legalizing medical marijuana), John Muir, Cesar Chavez and Harvey Milk. It’s the California that recognizes the vital role that our public colleges and universities play in laying the foundation for the state’s future.

Sadly, the clear winner in recent years has been the California of small things and small ideas. Through an outdated flaw in the structure of governance, one-third of the Legislature has a stranglehold on the state’s finances. The other two-thirds (the majority) knows the state is heading in the wrong direction. Yet given its lack of control over the purse strings, it’s left flailing around passing a lot of symbolic laws that go nowhere.

There’s no better illustration of the failure of our political “leaders” in Sacramento than the fact that they have left the state’s college students and their families, along with California State University and University of California faculty and staff members, no choice but to organize to fight against them. Thursday, there will be large demonstrations at every campus of the CSU and UC systems, as well as regional rallies in cities up and down the state (including the Capitol building). They will send the clear message to our elected representatives that the budgetary onslaught against our public universities must end now.

In the Legislature, a narrow band of anti-tax zealots has launched a frontal assault on California’s system of higher education. It’s happening at exactly the time when people across the state who have been thrown out of work are seeking to attend college to learn new skills to help them prepare for new jobs. They’re incapable of seeing that investing in public colleges could also give the state’s battered economy a much-needed stimulus. For every dollar invested in a CSU or UC, there’s about $4 of economic activity generated in the local community.

Like the GI Bill that helped 2.3 million students between 1945 and 1950, California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education served the state’s social, economic, and cultural advancement by creating a highly skilled work force and a generation of innovative young entrepreneurs. So successful were California’s public colleges that other states and countries looked to our Master Plan as a model for their own public college systems.

But in recent years the system has suffered the same “starve the beast” mentality that has been leveled at government. In 1966, the state provided $15 for every one dollar in student fees. Today it is only $1.40 for every dollar in student fees. Our elected representatives in Sacramento believe that California’s higher education system is worth only 40 cents? Even Gov. Ronald Reagan increased the budget for higher education.

As we “celebrate” the 50th anniversary of California’s Master Plan, the recent increases in student fees have forced thousands of students to either scale down their educational ambitions or pile on the units and work multiple jobs. The so-called generous offer of Schwarzenegger to increase funding for the CSU would only restore about half of what’s been cut from its budget since 2007.

The colossal failure of our elected “leaders” to deal humanely with the state’s finances cancels out the efforts by well-meaning legislators who might be trying to do the right thing. As a result, there is deservedly zero respect for the Assembly, the Senate and the governor. We’re told that in a $1.8 trillion economy we face a “structural deficit” that requires us to demolish public institutions that took a generation to build.

The assault on the goals of the Master Plan is not going to stop after the election this November and it’s not going to stop by passing another proposition. At this point we have no choice but to become the loudly squeaking wheel until the politicians get the message.

It’s time to remind the governor and the Legislature that the direction they’re leading the state is deeply unpopular, undemocratic and wrong.

Joseph A. Palermo

For all our bemoaning the tortures of health care reform, the debate has been healthy for the nation.

Everybody’s crazy aunts and uncles have been let out of their respective attics and basements, and it’s good to know who they are.

It’s also been helpful for Americans to see how the sausage is made and figure out whether they really want any.

Last week’s summit was not wasted time, despite criticism that it was only political theater. What’s wrong with that? I like theater. I especially like the tiny details and what they tell us. In theater, as in life, details matter.

My major professor in graduate school, a scholar of 17th century Spanish drama, used to say: “Always trust the artist.” If there’s a small white house perched on a hill, assume there’s a reason for it.

Consider why the artist put it there.

And so I watched the summit with this in mind. What did the actors in this particular play do and why? What did they want us to see? What were they trying to convey? From the physical evidence alone, one could draw certain conclusions. If you looked closely, you saw that Republicans all carried the same briefing book with the same seal. Message: Unity and discipline. Loaded with numbers and power points, they presented themselves as the party of reason.

Democrats, who toted various binders and materials, presented a far less unified, less disciplined image and relied heavily on anecdote.

Message: Caring.

What do people remember from the summit, to the extent they watched? They surely remember Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan hammering the Republican message about deficit spending in the health care legislation. And, they remember New York Rep. Louise Slaughter telling about a woman who, because she had no insurance, had to wear her deceased sister’s dentures.

There’s nothing to laugh at here, obviously. If true – and she dared us not to believe her – it’s a pathetic tale. Right-wing talk show hosts who have made sport of Slaughter’s story don’t get much credit for cleverness, but truly, sometimes an anecdote is too strange to be effective.

Maybe Republicans can trade Sarah Palin’s “death panels” for Louise Slaughter’s dentures and call it a draw.

As a political point, however, the contrast between personal anecdote versus mastery of health care economics is stark and telling.

If you’re in the market for competence, which vendor gets your attention? Theatergoers learned a couple of other things at the summit. The Democratic spin that the GOP has no ideas was contradicted by the summit. And, the bumper-sticker slogan that the GOP is the party of ‘no’ isn’t quite true.

It’s the party of ‘hell no.’ There’s good reason for this. Republicans feel the wind at their backs, not only because of polls, but also thanks to these unsubtle clues: New Jersey and Virginia both elected Republican governors; Massachusetts sent Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate.

And, two words: tea party.

Meanwhile, incumbent Democrats are in trouble. If they pass health care reform without Republican support, those from conservative districts likely won’t be returning to Washington next year. If they don’t pass health care reform, they may be tossed out anyway.

If you’re a Republican, why would you want to fix this? And yet. Does anyone really think that no reform is an option? On one thing, regardless of political affiliation, everyone seems to agree: The gridlock now clutching Washington is unacceptable.

Health care reform is now about the November election. It’s about gamesmanship. And though the parties differ in fundamental ways that really do matter, a growing majority of Americans no longer care who’s up or down, who wins or loses. A pox on everyone’s house, they say.

The tea party movement is partly a manifestation of this perspective. And, contra wing-nuttery in the margins of the movement, most constituents are everyday Americans who don’t think the federal government should control one-sixth of the economy.

This is not an irrational position, but rather suggests respect for human nature and chaos theory.

At the same time, more and more Americans are abandoning traditional political parties, with about 40 percent of the electorate identifying themselves as independents. A perfect storm this way comes.

Regardless of whether health care reform passes in the coming weeks or months, the debate has forced Americans to organize their thoughts.

Come November, climate change is going to have a whole new meaning.

Talk about good theater.