Dan Walters' Capitol Q&A

Question: How do I get legislation to increase the homeowner exemption of $7,000 on my personal residence property taxes? When the exemption was created, I believe that was the average price home. Now in Bksfld. it is about $250,000.
-- Michael White, Bakersfield

Answer: Legislation to increase homeowners' exemption died in Legislature recently. To do so would cost state many hundreds of millions because it would have to make up losses to schools for certain and perhaps local governments as well, and state budget already has multi-billion-dollar deficit. In fact, a good argument could be made to eliminate homeowners' exemption altogether, rather than increase it, because property owners already benefit from Proposition 13.
--Dan Walters

Question: The newly passed prison legislation seems to have problems. One is that prison administrators don't usually implement the educational and rehabilitation aspects. Do you think the legislation will do much to improve the sorry state of our prison system? Thank you.
-- Carol English, San Jose

Answer: Perhaps, but it's designed more to at least minimally satisfy federal judges than to comprehensively fix prisons.
--Dan Walters

Question: What is your view on California education? Do we really have a problem? The bottom line for the last 20 years is performance never seems to measure up. We have added more and more funding, but it is never enough. We have added more teachers yet it is never enough. Is the state legislature limited because of the union? Does the union resist real changes needed? Is this a problem due to the high influx of immigrants? I believe at one time the state even tried to hire teachers from Spain. Who answers this question?
-- John Russell, San Jose

Answer: Yes, education in California is in crisis, but the exact nature of the crisis and what, if anything, could be done to resolve it is unclear. The Stanford study runs 1,700 pages and 22 parts and makes a number of observations without an overall strategy for improvement, and there are those who believe that California's unique demographic and cultural circumstances would make it difficult to produce major improvement in academic performance. Consider it to be one of California's many political conundrums.
--Dan Walters

Question: With all the legitimate concerns of future drought conditions in many parts of California, are there any plans that you are aware of to invest in desalination facilities? If not, why not? Has improved technological methods been able to bring down costs or is the process still prohibitively expensive?
-- Stephen Carysfort, Santa Monica

Answer: Desalination involves huge amounts of electric energy, which currently comes largely from greenhouse gas-producing fossil fueled plants and is expensive. But the larger reality is that California doesn't really have a water shortage, but a political gridlock on how to capture, store, convey and price the water we have.
--Dan Walters

Question: The California High Speed Rail Authority requested approximately $102 million from the FY08 state budget to advance environmental and engineering efforts, and to purchase critical right of way. The governor's draft budget only allocates $1.2 million. What are the chances that the legislator will honor the request somehow and put the requested amount back in the budget?
-- Brandon Farley, San Diego

Answer: Not very high. The budget has a multi-billion-dollar deficit already and high-speed rail is not very popular in the current Legislature, which has other priorities for scarce money.
--Dan Walters

Question: If anyone has access to the facts re John Doolittle, it would be you. Would you please give us your educated opinion of what will be happening with Mr. Doolittle in the near future? Should he resign, what will happen in CA-04?
-- Richard Weinkle, Georgetown

Answer: This is just a guess, but I think that if the investigation continues he'll come under a lot of pressure from fellow Republicans to step aside rather than run for re-election next year. Assemblyman Ted Gaines is a likely GOP candidate should Doolittle hang it up - or be forced out. Democrats, of course, would love for a very tarnished Doolittle to run again next year because they'd have a good chance of picking up the seat, given his extremely close re-election in a strongly GOP district last year. Were Doolittle to be out of the picture, the district would likely remain in Republican hands.
--Dan Walters

Question: SCA 9's "all in one" approach" would permit voters to alter term limits, change how legislative districts are drawn and tighten political fundraising rules under one catch-all ballot measure. In my judgment, this is a meassure that is unconstitutional as it deals with more than one proposal. Do you agree and if passed would it result in litigation that defeats the intent of its authors to extent term limits for the June '08 primary?
-- Allen Settle, San Luis Obispo

Answer: You are probably correct but it's highly doubtful whether this measure will ever be enacted.
-- Dan Walters