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With the results now certified, Democrat John Laird, the state senator for the 17th District, won his reelection bid against Republican opponent Tony Virrueta with 65% of the vote. Following the 2021 redistricting occasioned by the 2020 Census, Laird succeeded Anna Caballero in representing San Benito County.
Laird was first elected to the Senate in 2020 after serving eight years as the secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. Prior to that, he served two terms as mayor of Santa Cruz and three terms as representative for the 27th Assembly District, where he authored 82 bills that became law.
The 17th District places Laird’s constituency in Santa Cruz, San Benito, Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties. Caballero now represents the 12th District, which includes Fresno, Madera and Merced counties.
BenitoLink interviewed Laird just before the certification to get his thoughts about the election, priorities for the county and concerns for the county’s future.
BenitoLink: Measure A, which would require voter approval of changes by the county to land use designations, passed by a slim majority. How do you think it will impact the county?
Laird: I’m curious to see how it will be implemented. If you have to have the regular elections on land use, is that going to be easy or a challenge? I’m curious to see how the Board of Supervisors implements it, especially since many of the supervisors didn’t like it. So I’m going to be watching it. Measure Z, banning fracking, was passed in 2016 when I was secretary. Somebody told me, “Don’t worry. You can go two terms in the Senate, and it won’t be resolved in the courts.” So I’m one term into the Senate, and it still hasn’t been resolved. So we will have to see what happens.
What do you think of the anti-incumbency sentiments expressed by voters in the last election?
I think that the real issue is that the voters were grumpy. They were grumpy coming out of the pandemic. They’re grumpy about jobs. They’re grumpy about inflation. I think the real issue nationally for the Democrats is to prove that they care about average people. And that is true in California, but the price wasn’t paid the way it was nationally. It cost three incumbents on the Hollister City Council their seats, and that was kind of a surprise to me. I thought there might be change, but not on that scale.
Housing is a major issue. What would you say to elected officials who say we can’t, or don’t want to, comply with the mandates?
Two-thirds of the cities and counties have submitted plans to satisfy the mandate. I thought that a lot would be unable to meet the mandate, and when it gets to that, we will have an animated discussion about what to do. And I think that’s still in play. If you look at Santa Cruz, where I was once mayor, these highrises are being built downtown, and as a result, the city is meeting its housing mandate. And yet, there are these “by-right” developments, one that was initially proposed for 18 stories in a very small lot in the middle of downtown and another on the edge of a residential neighborhood. It’ll be five stories, and the sun will set in people’s backyards in certain places at 1:30 or 2:00 in the afternoon.
If a city or county meets its housing mandate, the state should give them back local land use. They have to do that. The issue is that the state’s housing mandate program is one size fits all. If you’re in Carmel and have very few vacant lots in a square mile where the ocean bounds you on two sides, it’s not like there are many options. And in the coastal part of the Senate district, in Santa Cruz and Monterey, there is no importing of water. And it is challenging to think there will be large-scale development with no local water sources. And so it’s trying at the state level to navigate the specifics of different cities and counties. I know that’s an issue for this area because water is already at a premium.
And I think this is going to be your next question: It also creates amazing transportation issues.
Yes, it was the next question. Talk about transportation.
There’s sort of two sides to it. One is that the roads must be changed to accommodate what’s happening. Hwy 25 is an unbelievable challenge, and there are obviously safety issues after the crash there. That just accentuates what’s going on. There’s a large number of commuters already there, so we have to figure out how to deal with transportation to get them in and out safely and in a reasonable amount of time. And we need to help the city of Hollister or the county of San Benito figure out how to develop local jobs so that not as many people commute.
If you’re looking at job creation, it’s going to be difficult, and will put the onus on the city of Hollister in a lot of ways, with it not being subject to Measure A. I went to City Hall, and I met with the city manager. Then I went out to the airport and met with the airport manager. I want to work with the local officials because they’re going to have to make some tough decisions and feel supported in how they deal with housing and economics.
Do you see any possible new road funding or funds for other things? Sen. Caballero, for example, got San Juan Bautista $3 million for its water project.
Well, unfortunately, that was when the state had money. I know that’s an issue, and I want to help with relief. We have to see if we can find places to do it within the budget. And over the short term that will be challenging. But over a four-year term, I believe we will come back, and options will present themselves.
The water situation is across my entire Senate district. Even my home city of Santa Cruz has an aging infrastructure, and they have to do what their rate base won’t bear. San Lucas has tainted water. One of the two dams in south Monterey County has a broken spillway, and they can’t even fill up the dam in atmospheric rivers. There are 1 million Californians without clean drinking water. There are many places with aging infrastructure where building what’s needed can’t be supported by the existing rate base. So we have some work to do to bring money to the table.
What can be done about the hospital, the third major issue in the trifecta of county concerns?
I was instrumental in saving Watsonville Hospital. Two years ago, with Robert Rivas at my side, I completed a bill in 19 days. Normally, it takes six months to create a public hospital district. The bankruptcy court accepted the district’s bid when it was days old, and then we raised $60 million over six months to buy the hospital. Then, the voters passed the bond, and it is breaking even. At one point, the hedge fund that owned it said, “We’re going to close in a few weeks and lay over 600 people off.” So we have saved that hospital, even though it is still on the margins.
I stand ready to help. But I’m looking for leadership from Hazel Hawkins. I think their view has been that we’ll get an outside person to come in, who will be our salvation, and we’ll live happily ever after. And Hazel Hawkins is not in as bad economic shape as Watsonville. Even though I don’t represent San Benito County officially until the election is certified, my staff and I have, for at least a year, been regularly engaging with their staff, trying to figure out how to help with state agencies on things that they might ask for.
With Medicaid and Medicare not reimbursing at the actual cost of care, if you have a disproportionate amount of public payees, it stresses the hospitals, and that’s what’s happening. In an ideal world, we would be trying to figure out how to raise the reimbursement rates.
The last few grand jury reports identified budget shortfalls as the main factor in keeping critical services, like the fire department and sheriff’s office, from being fully staffed. Can the state assist with funding?
When I met with the chair of the Board of Supervisors, the CIO and other county people, this was at the top of their list. And we really need to help. The fire issue between the county and Hollister is unique and will play out according to local politics. I’ve heard both sides of it now fairly closely. The city feels like it’s not getting reimbursed enough, and the county feels like it doesn’t have the money to reimburse the increases that the city wants, so they will have to figure out how to resolve that.
But there is a much larger issue about fire service across the state. I am on the working group about fire insurance, and that is a monumental issue. I’m not sure that the insurance commissioner feels the urgency that I feel in talking to constituents every week about it. And if you talk to the insurance side of the house, they say one of the things that causes them great concern is the lack of adequate local fire service. So this is circular. We’re going to address the insurance thing. We have to figure out how to address adequate local fire resources. And right now, the state doesn’t put in much money.
We can help with Cal Fire, so they don’t have to fund some of the prescribed burns and other things, but that’s not the basic fire service, which is where a lot of the fiscal problems are. One of the studies said that you need between two and four additional fire stations across the county in the rural areas if you’re adequately meeting the need. That will be really hard. We’ll have to figure out a way, but until we get money in the state budget, we’re not positioned to do that. I think the real issue is that rural counties do not have the tax base to do what they really need to do.
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