Interview with Wally Knox

For instance, when the 405 and 101 freeways were built, they could have designed them to incorporate elements of mass transit, a space in which to do some kind of a heavy or light rail line. Something. They didn’t. So we now have these huge corridors that are well positioned for mass transit but are unusable. I think that as we do these improvements on the 405 and the 101 we should be thinking 20 years ahead and fold into those projects the potential for mass transit. I think we have the opportunity to, as we improve the freeway, to make a place where we could place a light rail or a heavy rail line or even a dedicated bus line. We need to use the existing footprint of the freeways as a place to do mass transit.

WEEKLY: Let’s say you’re State Senator Wally Knox. What are your priorities and what do you really want to involve yourself in if you get, let’s say, eight years in the Senate?KNOX: Well, there are three areas that I think I’ll work on in particular. One is to continue the work in education I’ve been doing. Outside of the middle colleges, I was a very, very strong supporter of class size reduction, which, I think, is crucial for a lot of reasons. But, I think, we need to continue working on reforming and improving the education system. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life, in one way or another, either in public or private life, working to improve the educational system. It’s not going to be one bill. It’s going to take a generation of activity. WEEKLY: There seems to be a division of opinion between the California Teachers Association and the governor on the proposed initiative that the CTA is likely to plunk on the November ballot, which would mandate raising the level of per pupil spending in the state to the national average. How do you feel about that proposal?KNOX: I’m in favor of the CTA’s proposal. Basically, there are four things I want from the schools. I want every student to be taught by a competent teacher. I was talking the other day with a teacher at a school where the certification rate was 15 percent; 85 percent of the teachers didn’t have credentials. Also, I want to see appropriate school rooms. I think, we should ratchet up our expectations and demand excellent classrooms, not adequate classrooms, excellent classrooms everywhere. And we need classrooms that are fully supplied. I went through years of buying chalk for the teachers at my children’s school. And the fourth thing I think we need is accountability. The first three things are funding issues. But, I think, unless you have some real accountability, you’re just not going to gain the public trust to get the money there. These issues can’t be resolved by introducing four bills. That is a lifetime of activity. So I’m going to be working on those issues for the rest of my life in one way or the other. WEEKLY: Okay, so education is priority one. What else? KNOX: Transportation. I feel, the work I started doing in transportation is really important to this town. And, I think, we need to move ahead dramatically on mass transportation. We are going to do that, in my view, not by pitting it against the commuter’s need to use the freeways. We’re going to do it by linking those two. And I’m going to be a very forceful advocate for aggressively moving to solve the freeway congestion issues in ways that are going to be kind of interesting.

I’ve also begun to lay the groundwork to work aggressively in the medical care area. One of the problems we’ve had in dealing with health care issues is that we’ve approached them in a piecemeal fashion. A legislator gets interested in breast cancer issues, another in prostate cancer issues; and as they focus on specific diseases and disabilities, bills are introduced mandating coverage. We could pass 50 of those bills a year, and in 20 years end up with a thousand laws on the books trying to chop us into pieces and out of this create a health care policy. That has been pretty frustrating.

Two years ago, I compelled the state auditor to do an audit. The audit looked at what every health insurance company and every HMO in the state was doing as far as denying health care coverage. And basically what we discovered is that somewhere between 30 and 35 percent of the time where someone goes to an insurance company for a health issue, you either have a denial, a downgrade, or a delay. That is intolerable. There is only one thing those companies are going to respond to and that is their bottom line. And so the legislation that I’ve introduced says very simply, "If you deny, downgrade, or delay payments on health care coverage, you’re going to suffer a financial penalty too steep for you to budget."

WEEKLY: How does that work?KNOX: There’s already a defined procedure for identifying delayed and downgraded payments. There’s just no penalty. So we already have a remarkably good handle on what’s really going on in our health care system. If you stop giving speeches about it and go out there and monitor it, we actually -- we actually know a lot. There’s no penalty for the darn thing. So you have to attach a percentage -- a kind of a percentage and penalty to it. And I’m still wrestling with what the appropriate level would be. You can imagine the counter-arguments the insurance companies are going to argue. We have to find a point where the penalty is significant enough to move them and move them strongly, but where you’re not going to hurt people who need medical coverage. WEEKLY: Do you get any signs from the Governor’s office about whether he’ll sign the bill? KNOX: No. WEEKLY: I realize they don’t give a lot of signs. KNOX: No, but I put nine bills on the Governor’s desk this last year, and they were not tiny bills. He signed everything I put on his desk. I put a bill on his desk to guarantee that people can use half of their sick leave coverage to take care of their sick children. Now that’s a bill that I just plopped on his desk and said, "Here it is, Gray." I had no prior discussions with him about the bill. And he signed it. So I’ve dealt with Gray Davis in different ways. On the Eight-Hour Day Bill we negotiated for a month solid. On the Sick Leave Bill, I just dropped the bill on his desk and said, "What do you want to do?" And I’ve had a 100 percent batting average with him so far. I think, I’ve figured out a few things about him. WEEKLY:From my point of view, some of your most notable work has been the study you did on the middle class. KNOX: I remain absolutely convinced that the problems with middle class income are very real and that while the flush times we are in wonderful to have, they are obscuring the major underlying problem [of growing income inequity]. I’ve been thinking about this for 20 years. My personal conclusion is the underlying reason for it is a failure to invest in working people. A failure to, on a day by day, year by year basis, to continually keep investing in workers so that their work becomes more productive. And that is a complete change in American economic history.