Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Middle Man: Jim Cunneen says his votes are guided by issues, not ideology.

Jim Cunneen gets bills passed by 'governing in the center'

Talking traffic, schools and safety with our man in the state house

By Jessica Lyons

Jim Cunneen earned his Eagle Scout badge more than 20 years ago, but Campbell's state Assemblyman can still recite the Boy Scout Law from memory. "A scout is: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent," he says in one breath. Those who've known him might not be surprised.

On April 10 from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at The Campbell Community Center, Cunneen will kick off a series of 10 town hall meetings which he will host throughout the 24th district. The Reporter spoke with Cunneen about schools, traffic and his plans for the Valley during his third and final term in office.

What's on your agenda for the town hall meeting next Saturday?

I try to limit what I talk about to about 10 minutes. I'll give a general outline of the specific issues we're dealing with, the climate in Sacramento, just to sort of spark interest. I will cover an update on the budget process, an update on the Special Session, with a summary of the governor's four sponsored bills. I want to give constituents an opportunity to see a summary of the bills and respond and ask questions about it, because it's really going to change the way our schools operate in very real, substantial ways. HMO reforms are another huge issue. How do we rein in the worst practices of health maintenance organizations while preserving some of their best qualities--emphasis on prevention, directing medical inflation that's going out of control in California.

I'll probably touch on infrastructure needs. California is woefully behind in investing in the future, and that is going to be a major portion of this two-year session, so I will talk about some of the major proposals on the table and the alternatives. Those will be the major themes I will push because they are high on the radar screen at the moment, but the rest of the hour, the extra 50 minutes is literally to respond to any questions that constituents have.

In your opinion, what are the top issues facing Campbell?

The top issue facing all of our communities is how do we improve our public school system. Period. And that's where I can have the most impact as a state legislator. We expect children at all levels, whether they're in wealthy areas or poor areas, to do better. When those fourth-grade reading scores recently came out showing California had improved from 50th to 49th, we know we're in a world of trouble. We're really not doing the things we need to do to make sure every Californian is equipped with basic reading and mathematical skills.

Confidence in public schools' ability to produce really excellent students has ebbed. We need to do some bold things in the legislature to rebuild people's confidence in the public school system. We've already begun that process with class-size reduction over the past few years.

I live in Almaden Valley and inevitably when I'm shopping at the Safeway or the PW, a parent will come up to me and say something along these lines, "Jim, it's the first time you politicians have ever increased funding for public education, and I actually saw something dramatically different happen in my local school." That was the power of class-size reduction.

We can be serious about making the public school system work again and produce excellent results like it used to in the 1960s There's still a lot of work to do and I think these four special session bills are going to be a piece of it. I was very proud, I'm the only Republican the governor asked to be an author of one of those four major bills, that was the reading initiative. Kerry Mazzoni [D-San Rafael] and I introduced it together, bipartisan. And I think it [the reading initiative] is the most important bill because reading is the foundational skill for all other learning.

So the people of Willow Glen or Campbell or Cupertino can know that we're serious. We're so serious that we've just passed about $100 million of new money, devoted to these intensive programs for the early years, K through three, to make sure kids get off to their educational experience with a solid foundational skill: reading.

You've mentioned some strengths of Governor Davis' school improvement proposals. As a member of the Assembly's Education Committee, what are some of the weaknesses and specific points you dislike about it?

I think [Davis] could have expanded the Special Session to also address another fundamental problem in California schools, which is safety--the right to be free of fear in a public school setting. In all too many schools, both suburban and urban, violence has been increasing. Female gangs and the rise of female gangs is a serious issue.

We can't have honest-to-goodness learning environments where people are going to school feeling fear. We didn't address that in the Special Session which was disappointing. Also, we didn't address some of the fundamental funding issues. We're going to have to do that in the budget process now, but it seems to me that we could have taken a serious stab at increasing our efforts to equalize funding through out the school districts. We have great disparities in Santa Clara County alone, when you compare wealthier school districts with the poorer ones.

I was also disappointed that the governor's budget did not include any equalization funding--this is the funding program to bring lower school districts up faster. Everybody rises, nobody loses, everyone grows. We started that precedent my first year. Suburban school districts are put at a disadvantage right now with the lower per-pupil spending, so I'd like to see that seriously addressed.

We still pay our teachers too little to live in our communities. And the infrastructure in terms of not just buildings, but also books and materials is at a low ebb, and we need to address that. I hope we have a good honest conversation about that post-Special Session. I think it's fundamental to solving the problem.

As the Vice Chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, what are you doing to address the issues of school violence and funding issues?

I served on the Budget Committee for four years, and one of the things I fought very hard for was equalization in the budget. We were successful in three of the four budgets I've been involved in so far. It's not a partisan split, it's more of an urban-suburban split in the legislature, where Democrats and Republicans who represent more suburban districts like mine are more in favor of equalization.

What about the safety issues you referred to? What do we need to do to make our schools safer?

There's a couple of measures in the Public Safety Committee to try to increase public safety on campuses. One of them has to do with gun stores that are located near campuses--that is a bill that just went through the committee.

We're going to have to combat issues like the gang issue, and drugs and guns around schools. Those are going to be on our radar screen to help make schools a place where people don't fear to go. There's going to be some measures dealing with strengthening California laws in terms of hate crimes and tolerance and diversity in our schools.

And the gang problem?

There are some bills, for instance, that would allow prosecutors to hold parents of gang members accountable to repay some of the damage they do, to increase some of the penalties associated with gangs. These are all issues we are discussing in Public Safety right now.

Traffic is again the number one concern for Bay Area residents. What are you doing to address the problem?

One of the things we're looking at is some sort of funding mechanism to increase transportation infrastructure investments, either through a bond capability, or through existing taxes, but directing them to the state highway account.

For example, the sales tax we pay on gasoline right now is actually a double tax. We actually pay the retail value of the gasoline, which includes about 18 cents of other taxes. That's outrageous as a principle. However it wouldn't be outrageous if the actual sales tax were totally dedicated to transportation as well--then it becomes a user fee.

It seems to me we ought to use that existing revenue and totally dedicate it to transportation. Frankly that's where most of us thought all the dollars were going anyway. In the case of gas purchases, dedicating it to transportation would raise an enormous amount of money--about $800 million per year over a 20-year period.

One of the proposals I'm backing is to allow a greater percentage of the state highway accounts to be dedicated to local cities to address their needs. I think that time is overdue. We ought to allow local communities to set their own priorities outside of the state process by dedicating an extra few dollars of the state highway account for the discretion of the local governments.

Do you think the light rail presents a real solution to problems of traffic and smog?

Not in the near term. And I think one of the reasons we don't have a third lane on 87 now was a little bit of social engineering--to provide a powerful incentive, traffic congestion, to use the light rail. I think that experiment hasn't worked, and that's why I'd like to see a third lane opened. I think more environmental damage has been done because we didn't maximize those lanes from the beginning. I'm not a scientist, but I do know that cars pollute more when they are standing still. They pollute less when they are moving.

I don't think you can do it by any manipulative social engineering to force people to use a mode of transportation they're not ready to use, and a mode of transportation that really doesn't connect where they live, without multiple change in transportation modes, to where they actually work.

So how can they use that in any viable way? I think it's going to be some time after all the light rail links are in before that becomes a system that is very viable, and even then I'm concerned in a certain respect because it stops so often, the commute time is so long. It's going to be terribly difficult for the light rail to be anything more than a contributor to solving the problem, It's not going to be the panacea.

It seems that our top priorities ought to be the expansion of our current freeway system: the expansion of 880, particularly as it links my West Valley constituents, in Campbell and Saratoga and Cupertino with the industrial corridor. It seems to me that needs to be expanded. Also, the 101 from Morgan Hill to San Jose needs to be a more viable freeway.

Some might attribute your excellent record of getting your bills signed into law to the fact that you were the lone Republican, among the Valley's representatives, under a Republican governor. What is your response to that?

The legislature has always been Democratic essentially. We had a short, one-year stint where the assembly was Republican, but the Senate was still Democrat. The senate has always been Democrat in my--now, going on five years. The fact is the bills still had to pass through Democrat majorities.

All I can do is continue to try to be responsive--lots of my bill ideas come from town hall meetings. I met adult educators at a town hall meeting and they gave me tours of their facilities, and I carried legislation to promote adult education. That was one that we had to overcome the governor's objections on and the governor's veto on to finally get it passed into law.

I think my ability to succeed regardless of the governor isn't the issue, because I've already been able to succeed with Democrats governing the legislature. I think if I can win approval in the legislature, the governor's going to be inclined to sign my bills.

How is working for a Democratic administration under Governor Davis different from working under Governor Wilson?

When the governor's people came and said, "Jim will you co-author this [reading] bill, and we really think this one's crucial because it requires a two-thirds vote, the other [three education reform bills] only required a simple majority." They had to get a Republican on the bill, and they were smart to go out to a Republican. I said look, the governor campaigned saying he wanted to govern California in the center, he wanted to be moderate and I'll be more than willing to meet him half-way.

If he defines the center in California to be what is the consensus of the Democrats, then I'm not particularly interested in working with him. If he's willing to risk the wrath of the liberal wing of his party--like I certainly have done with the conservative wing of mine, with my pro-choice stance, my pro-environment stance, supporting the ban of Saturday night specials. I took risks. I took criticism for that. If he's willing to do that in order to govern California in the center, then I'm willing to work with him. If not, and what is safe is what is the consensus to just one party, forget it.

In the case of this reading bill, my first experience with him, it was positive--he was willing to hold the line when some of the more liberal legislators were trying to get him to change the bill in very substantial ways that would have hurt the suburban school communities that I represent. To me, that was a powerful signal that he was serious about governing. There will be other tests, however, and I'm not sure he will meet every test.

Some might say that your social agenda, with education being your top priority, and your commitment to preserving the environment, actually falls more closely in line with Davis as opposed to Wilson.

Well Wilson was pro-choice. He was also considered very sensitive to the environment when he was senator. Maybe less so as a governor. I think there's a hybrid of the two. I can identify with Pete Wilson as well as Gray Davis. I certainly disagree with Governor Wilson on divisive initiatives like prop 187, which I think was a wrong-headed approach and a mean-spirited approach to a real problem which is illegal immigration.

To me, both parties are hypocritical. The Republican party is hypocritical. They say they are for the individual, yet they're overly eager to try to enforce through government institutions how people should lead their moral lives. I think that is wrong. Stay out of the bedroom.

The Democrat party is hypocritical. They say they stand for the individual, yet they are a little too overly eager to adopt command and control policies over our economy and tell managers how to run their businesses. My position is that I want a minimal role for government in my economic life, and I want a minimal role for government in my moral life.

I'm a Republican and I'm proud to be a Republican. I'm a Republican for very specific reasons--the issues that really affect me at a gut level. I believe the individual is preeminent to government and I think the government's role in the economy can be over-encroaching and I'm comfortable with my environmental positions as a Republican. I've always tried to balance a strong belief in peoples' property rights with preservation of the environment for future generations.

I look at each bill individually, not saying this should be the Republican position or the Democrat position, liberal or conservative. I look at each bill and their merits individually, and then vote my conscience. That's the way it ends up working out for me every year in the legislature.

So who did you vote for? Clinton or Dole?

I voted for Bob Dole. Bill Clinton is just reprehensible to me in terms or his personal action. He's a reckless man. But that doesn't mean he hasn't done some good things. But I'm voting for George Bush. George Bush is the great hope for the Republican party and Republicanism I can identify with.

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