Wilma Chan

Wilma Chan of Oakland held her last press availability as a Member of the California State Assembly. Her staff handed out what was described as a "partial" list of accomplishments even though it ran to 5 pages single spaced.
Chan has been in the Assembly for 6 years and left office because of term limits. She is the outgoing Chair of the Assembly Health Committee. She plans on running for State Senator Don Perata's seat when he is termed out of office in 2008. In January, she will begin teaching California Government at the University of California, Berkeley.
This was a wide ranging conversation with a handful of reporters that lasted just about an hour. The Assemblymember covered many different topics including her areas of accomplishments, the work that remains to be done in her areas of expertise, and sounded confident that she will be returning to take those issues up again as a Senator.
On the Last Session and What Remains to be Done
The governor was motivated to sign a lot of bills that he otherwise have and also there was money this year. The economy was good. That combination made for a fairly successful session.
But yes, there are a lot, a lot of things that need to be done, that are left undone. The ones I care about a lot are children's health care and health care in general. I think there's a lot of work to be done there. Even the 800,000 children, we've only made a small dent in that since we've been working on this bill for a number of years right now.
The issue of universal health care, Prop 82 didn't pass, and I was able to get $100,000,000 in the budget to expand the state preschool program, but I think the whole issue of what we are going to do to get four year olds ready for kindergarten in a very competitive kind of economy is still on the table. That wasn't resolved.
And then there were some issues from the last session that weren't' resolved that I think everyone knows about--the whole issues with the prisons, health care prison reform. The state is under court order to fix those things and there were no proposals that we were able to pass at the end of session. And the reason I point that one out is because there's going to be a very high price tag on whatever the prison fix is.
One difference I have with the Governor is that he said under no circumstance will I even consider raising taxes. I'm not saying that absolutely we need to raise taxes, but I'm saying that all options need to be on the table when you have such big things that you need to fix like the prison system, which we're forced to fix--$3 billion, when we have 6 million people in California who don't have health insurance, and the cost of even the children's insurance was estimated to be about $300,000 a year. The issue becomes, if you want to improve the quality of life in these areas, how are you going to do it? And shouldn't we look at all options on the table? Should we put everything on the table and have an honest debate about it?
On the Issues She Hopes to Take Up as a Senator in 2008
Education is going to continue to be a high priority. You probably read last month that even though there was money added to education this year, we still rank 47th in the nation on an independent study that was done. And that's not just on funding. That had to do with student achievement, the safety of the schools; there are a lot of factors that they took into account. We can't be 47th in the country. That is just not acceptable for our communities and our students. So that's one issue I'm going to keep working on.
Health care--I'm not confident that everything is going to get done before I get back. It would be nice. I would have less things to work on, I guess, but I think that's going to continue to be an issue. And it's not just whether we can cover people, but what kind of care are they going to get.
I had a bill vetoed this year where, as you know, a lot of these older people have to choose between these drug plans--it's very, very complex. There are over 50 drug plans that they have to choose from. I had a very simple bill. This year that just said that those 50 plans should be rated for consumers. Right now we rate health insurance organizations and I just wanted to add these prescription drug plans to that rating that the state already does because people don't know what to pick. They don't know what it does cover, what it doesn't cover. So, I'm hoping that on Medicare, first of all that there may be some change at the federal level that I think is really needed because it's become really difficult for the elderly to pick a plan that works for them. We'll probably have to do some things at the state level to protect our elderly population.
On Campaign Finance Reform and How She Will Run for the Senate
After having spoken about how she will run for the State Senate in 2008 and emphasizing talking with the voters face to face, the Assemblymember was asked about the role of money in all of this.
This is what she said:
I think it's disappointing that some form of campaign finance reform didn't pass thie year either through the legislature or on the ballot. I'm sure that’s going to come up again. It's real interesting on Prop 89, as you know, voters actually would like us to reform the system but they didn't want us to put any public money into it. I guess that was the issue--because we're not very popular these days.
I always run an economical campaign, but when you're trying to reach a population of almost a million people, it's going to cost money no matter what. Because you do have to do some mail, even if you don't do TV, you do cable TV, postage is expensive, printing is expensive. One thing I will say, most of you have watched me campaign. I don't do a lot of glossy campaign mail. I don't think I've ever done, maybe I've done once, a full color mailing. I try to make my mail informative, I try to make it something that reflects me, reflects what I'm doing, reflects my values. And something hopefully that voters will take a look at. I'm not one who loves sound bytes or who will just do those kinds of things. It has to reflect me.
So, I try to be cost effective, but it's still going to cost a lot of money because it's a lot of voters. Right now, because of that I'm going to have to raise the money because I'm working within the system that exists right now.
What She Learned and How She Performed
I would honestly tell you that I think we did a pretty good job. I think our office did a very good job. That's mainly, I believe because I chose the right staff. I chose the right staff in the Capitol and in the district. I chose staff who share my values and who supported me in office for the right reasons--the right reasons being because I wanted to get something done, and in certain areas. I knew that I only had six years. I went in very focused. I knew that I wanted to focus on education, health care, family, and children's issues. I didn't try to do everything, because if you try to do everything in six years, you end up doing nothing.
Just little things and it's not really very little--the amount of casework that we did, here, down in the district. The amount of people that we helped with their personal problems amazes me, and that wasn't me--that was my staff. If someone came with a problem, like they were going to get evicted from their house, they didn't have money to buy their prescription drugs, they didn't get their Medi-Cal card on time, did we just write a letter to the agency and leave it like that? It wasn't like that. My staff here worked on those cases until they were done and actually got people the results. Like I said, that's not me. I didn't do that kind of work. I'm very proud of my staff. They really walked the extra mile for people. That's what people want. That's what you're supposed to do when you are in office.
Accomplishments That Give Her Particular Pride
In terms of legislation, the one that really stands out to me was putting the children's health care on the map, even though we didn't get it done. It has become--the governor talks about it all the time, and I think eventually he's going to have to deal with it.
The preschool again, we didn't get it dopne, but that fact that the people of California are talking about that we expanded state preschool for the first time in many years, I'm extremely proud of that.Then, in terms of bills--my bill to protect the people who don't have health insurance or who don't have enough health insurance from being overcharged by hospitals--I'm very proud of that. It took four years to get that bill passed. And now I know that people, when they go in in January to the emergency room--they go in for some procedure, they can't be handed a bill that is limitless. Because that's the case now--they could be charged anything. My bill fundamentally changes the way that hospitals can bill patients.
The bill on the environment I'm very proud of, to ban the flame retardants in furniture, to make California the first state in the nation to do that. To change the standards in pipes to basically no lead in order to protect children and families when they drink tap water.
And then the Asian American Community my first year, I carried the legislation the first year to allow California to continue to give food stamps and cash aid to permanent residents, non citizens. That was very important for the community. Also for the Asian Community to have formed the Asian, Pacific, Islander Legislative Caucus, we formed that the first year I was there. Now it's become an institution in the Capitol.
[There's a lot more on the list. She will be missed. www.californiaprogessreport.com/2006/11/assemblymember_7.html