Steve Poizner made a fortune in Silicon Valley by developing global positioning receivers for cell phones. Now the state insurance commissioner is writing big checks in an exploratory bid to secure the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination.

In a meeting with The Bee's Capitol Bureau on Tuesday, Poizner described how he would handle California's budget crisis and address the state's economic competitiveness if he were governor.

What's your assessment of the (current budget) situation, and what do you do?

I think the state of California is in one of the worst crises in maybe 100 years or more. A big part of the problem is that the tax base is actively departing the state of California. Some 1.2 million taxpayers have left the state since 2000. You have companies in Silicon Valley who have declared California as "no man's land."

If I was governor, I wouldn't do anything to damage the restoration of our broken economy. … Most of the so-called spending cuts are accounting gimmicks. … And it imposes tax increases on the working-class folks in California that are really struggling.

Are we going back to an era of limits?

I don't want to be the governor that manages a state that is in decline. I want healthy, robust economic growth again. Right now, because of our tax and regulatory structure, we've chased the manufacturing structure and a lot of other jobs out of the state. And by the way, we haven't cleaned up the environment at all.

Does that mean California should not be going it alone on ... global warming?

I think we should continue to take the lead on cleaning up the environment. I think some of those environmental rules also link up nicely with national security issues. … I think there is some very serious concern about our dependence on petro-dictators. We need to rapidly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. However, we need to implement this leadership vision in a very careful way and not completely drive the economic engine out of this state.

What is the impediment to continuing innovation?

I know how venture capitalists think. In the global economy, money moves in a nanosecond to maximize returns. Business people and investors can run the numbers to see what works. What they can't deal with – what drives them completely bonkers and out of state – is when the regulatory structure can't give them an answer in a reasonable amount of time. The red tape and the ambiguity and the burdensome regulations create this uncertainty. You want to build a power plant in this state? Forget it. You want to build manufacturing? You're not going to get permitting in a reasonable amount of time. You can't build a business plan around that uncertainty. That's caused a maximum amount of exodus.

What would you do to keep them (businesses) here?

Let's use Google as an example. Their server farms are not in California. Why is that? Well, electricity costs 30 percent higher … because we can't build power plants in California. We import 30 percent of our electricity from dirty, coal-burning plants in the Midwest.

The fact is we're in an intense global economy. … The Chinese are increasingly aggressive, smart, bright, innovative people, and they are going to flatten us. And so is India and other states. Whether you like it or not, we all have to get together and decide how are we going to get Google's server farms in California, how we are going to get Intel to build a chip plant in California, how we're going to get AAA to not move their call centers out of California.

Are you going to sign a no-new-taxes pledge?

I might. This state is already one of the highest tax states in the country. The idea of raising taxes is a failure in determination and a failure in leadership. Where are the taxes going up (in the state budget plan)? It's not like a bunch of rich people are volunteering this $14 billion. They don't have the guts to raise taxes on rich people because rich people have lobbyists and rich people are mobile and rich people will leave. And yet they're raising taxes on people who aren't mobile, who don't have lobbyists. This is really the most disgusting, terrible thing I've heard in a long time – the idea of raising $14 billion of taxes on working-class people who are about to lose their homes.

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Call Peter Hecht, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5539.

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