Meg Whitman, who became a billionaire while helping eBay grow to 346 million users, called Thursday for sharply shrinking California's work force by laying off more than 30,000 state employees.
In a luncheon speech to the Roseville Chamber of Commerce and an interview afterward, the Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Silicon Valley CEO repeatedly spoke of slashing "head count" and said she would outdo Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in cutting state employee ranks.
On a day when Schwarzenegger proposed eliminating 5,000 state jobs and cutting $9 billion from the budget, Whitman said: "I would do a bigger number of layoffs."
Whitman has vowed since February to cut 10 percent of California's 345,000-employee work force if she is elected governor. In her appearance Thursday before hundreds of luncheon guests, she described her plans to invoke a CEO-style of governance.
She said she would start by hiring a team with a mission to slash state agencies and departments.
"The governor gets 4,000 appointments, 400 of which make an enormous difference because they are agency heads or department heads," she told the gathering. "Those are the individuals that will streamline regulations, that will collapse departments and will lay off middle management and superfluous overhead."
Whitman didn't spell out how she intends to navigate a fractious state Legislature, a two-thirds budget vote requirement and powerful state employee unions to impose her will as governor.
But in an interview, she said she was prepared to make significant cuts in the state employee ranks even if it adds to burgeoning unemployment in California.
"There will always be dislocation," she said. "But the most important thing is we have to get a government that the citizens of California can afford. And as badly as I feel about the 30,000 or 40,000 people that will lose their jobs, I feel even more badly for the millions of Californians who are paying higher taxes, who are looking at a state that is not working."
Whitman, who is still officially an exploratory candidate, has donated $4 million to her campaign to date.
She is facing a challenge from another deep-pocketed Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who sold a wireless technology firm for $1 billion in 2001.
Also seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination is former Rep. Tom Campbell.
The three candidates oppose key special election initiatives Schwarzenegger and the Legislature are counting on to lessen the state budget crisis.
Whitman and Poizner are against Proposition 1A, which would set state spending limits but trigger $16 billion in extended tax hikes, and Prop 1C, which would allow $5 billion in borrowing against future lottery proceeds. Campbell supports 1A but opposes 1C.
Whitman said she is angry over higher taxes approved in the recent state budget deal. She gave an example of a family of four earning $40,000 that will get $800 back from the Obama administration's stimulus program – only to have to pay $732 in new state taxes.
"They might as well have just done a wire transfer from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, California," she told the luncheon crowd.
Call Peter Hecht, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5539.
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