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Q&A with Napolitano on ‘Arizona Illustrated’
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SPECIAL TO THE GREEN VALLEY NEWS
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, right, was campaigning and raising money for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., last week. |
Published: Saturday, July 26, 2008 6:12 PM MDT
Gov. Janet Napolitano appeared on KUAT-TV, Channel 6’s “Arizona Illustrated” with Host Bill Buckmaster, Green Valley News Editor James Bennett and Arizona Public Media reporter Christopher Conover last week. The governor came to Southern Arizona to talk about the impact of military bases on the economy, to tour the Phoenix Mars Mission project at the University of Arizona and to attend a fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. The video of the 27-minute interview is available at http://ondemand.azpm.org/videoshorts/watch/2008/7/21/kuat-governor-janet-napolitano/. A partial, edited transcript of the interview follows. Mars project Bill Buckmaster: You’ve just come from touring the Phoenix Mars Mission Control Center. Impressive, isn’t it?
I had been there earlier before they actually landed the vessel from which they’re conducting all the experiments, so I got to see kind of the dress rehearsal and the mock up of the landing site, but to actually see the photographs from Mars, they actually have some that are in 3-D so you wear the glasses and get a sense of the depth perception there, to see depictions of the ice gorges that they’re making there, and get a sense of the size that they’re doing. It’s astounding.
Giffords versus Bee
Bennett: Last week, President Bush was in town for a fundraiser for State Senate President Tim Bee, $1,000 a plate. I’m wondering, what does a governor bring in these days for a fundraiser? Is it like a two-for-one coupon that you get?
Napolitano: (laughing) It’s cheaper. It’s not $1,000.
Bennett: It’s a little bit cheaper? An interesting question is this: You’re campaigning for Gabrielle Giffords in a race against Tim Bee, the Senate president. Tim Bee was somebody, I guess, who has helped you immensely in the Legislature in helping you get through a budget. Is it difficult sometimes — in a political season — to put personal feelings aside and raise money against somebody like Sen. Bee?
Napolitano: Well, I think the voters in district have a choice between two very dedicated public servants, and I have worked well with Tim Bee. He’s worked well with me on matters of state government. Gabby’s in the Congress. I think she’s done a spectacular job there, representing all of Arizona, really. And so I think if you’ve been doing a spectacular job, you deserve to be re-elected, so I’m happy to campaign for her, even though I have the utmost respect for Tim Bee.
Military’s economic impact
Conover: Governor, you were also out over at Davis-Monthan (Air Force Base) earlier today talking about economic impact of military bases. Tremendous economic impact, on the state of Arizona, not just Tucson with all our military bases here.
Napolitano: Yeah, that’s right. We had just completed a study of all the military installations in Arizona and what is their overall economic impact. We used the 2005 numbers, I think that was the last year that all the complete data was available. But it was $9.1 billion, which means that you could take the five largest employers—private employers in Arizona and add them together and they wouldn’t equate to what the military puts into the economy. And that didn’t include, by the way, the defense contractors, the Raytheons, for example. That was not included as part of that $9.1 billion. So, it’s significant, it’s ongoing. We want to support our military and our military installations in the right way as we move forward.
Health care
Buckmaster: Not only were you at Davis-Monthan, you were at the University of Arizona, and you were at Kino Hospital, and the University Physicians Center there. More residency programs, or new residency program…
Napolitano: A new residency program. This is very exciting…
Buckmaster: We need more doctors in Arizona, there’s no question.
Napolitano: Absolutely. We think within the next 12 years we need 5,000 more physicians in Arizona, and one good way to get them is to grow them, and the best way to grow them is to have residency programs here because the statistics show that at least half of the doctors who do their residency in Arizona stay in Arizona ultimately to practice. We think that actually is higher here in Arizona because the quality of life is so good. But yes, with university physicians and the UA, we opened up a new program for residents and welcomed them today.
The residents we welcomed today are in internal medicine and psychiatry but they have a variety of other specialties that they will be phasing in over the next few years. That will help us add to our health care work force.
We’re also, of course, building a second medical school in Phoenix, under the direction of the University of Arizona, the budget this year included $470 million to complete that project. We also have been increasing our capacity for training nurses, and indeed Arizona State—I have to mention Arizona State, I know it’s Tucson, but I mention Arizona State…
Buckmaster: We’ll forgive you, we’ll forgive you.
Napolitano: It’s now the largest public university college of nursing in the country.
All-Day kindergarten
Bennett: Governor, my daughter just finished with kindergarten, and I’ve seen her blossom from beginning until the end. I’m wondering what you feel has been the impact of All-Day kindergarten on students, and the analysis that you have of that so far. Is it working, and how well is it working?
Napolitano: We don’t know the full impact yet because it’s too new. I mean we really have had only universally available All-Day K for the last year or two, and those students now are just entering into elementary school.
I think we’ll see the real impact as they go on. What happens is these students who’ve had All-Day K, well then first grade is going to be much different for them if they’ve had only Half-Day K. And Half-Day K was really less than half a day by the time you’ve had your snack and you got to school and had recess and everything, so it was really like two hours. So, they really have a full day. It really accelerates first grade almost a year.
So the challenge is now, first grade, they’ve got to up their curriculum, and second grade has to up their curriculum, to match the new first grade, and so on as it ripples through the system.
I think we’ll really see it when your daughter graduates from high school. I think we’ll see it in her test scores. I think we’ll see it in her level of student achievement, and that will be the long-term benefit of All-Day K.
AIMS testing
Conover: Governor, there is a task force in the budget to look at AIMS, the future of AIMS, what do you see is the future of AIMS? Has its time come to be revamped or to go away?
Napolitano: I think so. I don’t know about going away, but it’s certainly time to be revamped. It’s a 10th grade test and we’ve really gotten off track with it. It started as a good idea. Holding the school system accountable for student achievement. Making sure that students were learning what they needed to learn. That’s all well and good, but the AIMS test has gotten so convoluted over the last couple of years that I’m not sure that it tells us what we need to know.
In my view, when a student receives and Arizona high school diploma, that should mean that student is ready to take on post high school math, language arts, and so forth without having to have remedial course work, be they do it in an advanced technical vocational setting, a community college or a university setting, and the AIMS test doesn’t tell you that, because it’s a 10th grade test.
So I think we need to look back and say, what is the test for? The test really is to see if you’re ready for the next level of education, because you can’t end at high school at this day and age. Let’s get our testing in line with that mission. And I think we’d all be better off.
Tourism
Buckmaster: Let’s turn to the economy and Arizona’s very tourism dependent economy, and the leisure indicators, as you know, do not look good. The future indicators for this year with airline service being cut back, I think by November. Sky Harbor was going to be down by about 12 percent, Tucson International 17 percent in the amount of flights — number of seats in those…coming out of those airports. It’s a difficult time, and this could have a big impact, couldn’t it, on our Arizona economy?
Napolitano: It could. Those discretionary dollars that people have are very hard to come by with inflation and the price of gas, and the uncertainty in the overall economic picture. What’s happened to people’s home vales, and so forth. Yeah, we expect it to be a tough year for tourism.
We just had our state conference on tourism, recently, and I think the industry recognizes that. Now, one of the things we’re doing through the state office of tourism is encouraging people to instead of taking a vacation, to take a “state-cation.” In other words, take your time off, but go to one of the beautiful places we have in our state, and spend your tourist dollar here. Learn a little bit more about Arizona. If you’re from Southern Arizona, go north. If you’re from Northern Arizona, go south. Get a sense of this beautiful state that we’re in, which has great vacation spots, with—quite frankly—very competitive rates right now. So we’ll encourage everybody, including everybody that’s watching this show tonight.
Mortgage crisis
Bennett: Governor, another economic question for you. This has to do with the mortgage crisis. What has the state been able to do to help Arizonans stay in their homes during this difficult time? I know that you’ve talked to some banks. Could you tell our audience how the state has been able to help?
Napolitano: Right. I met with the major lenders before Christmas to talk about the issue of foreclosure, particularly related to individuals who were actually living in the homes. These were not investment homes or turnaround homes. But these were homes they were living in, and we reached some agreements with them, including that if people had one of these sub-prime mortgages and they couldn’t pay the balloon payments and so forth, that there would be an effort to move them into a standard-rate mortgage that they could afford, so they could afford to stay in their home.
We’ve set up help lines, and we know that when people call into the help line and we can work with them and a councilor and their lender, we have a very, very good chance of getting them into a mortgage that they can survive on, that’s sustainable for them. So we encourage people to use those help lines. I don’t have the number on the top of my head, but if you go to the governor’s Web site you’ll find all the information about that there. We’ve made the information available throughout the state.
Bennett: Is the worst yet to come with the mortgage crisis in the state?
Napolitano: It’s hard to say. It’s been pretty bleak now for quite a while. We’ve kind of plateaued. Whether we’re going to go back and have another plateau down, hard to say. Part of it may depend on what happens nationally. What stimulus packages are added on to what already has occurred. What happens with Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, and all of that, so we’ll have to see.
But my No. 1 goal is to say, look, many people got into mortgages they cannot afford — for a variety of means. One reason was nobody was watching what was being represented. So people got into mortgages no reasonable lender really should have put them in. We ought to work to keep people, particularly families, in their homes, where we can, and that’s been our chief focus.
10-hour work days
Buckmaster: Your counterpart up in Salt Lake City, the governor of Utah (Jon Huntsman Jr.), has decided to try a four-day workweek for some state agencies, closing on Fridays I think in the month of August. Are you looking at it for Arizona?
Napolitano: I am. I have not made any decision yet, but I was talking with him and realized Utah’s a Republican conservative state. He’s a conservative Republican governor, but from an energy-saving standpoint, from an environmental standpoint, he did move a great, big part of state government into four 10-hour days as opposed to the five eight-hour day workweek. So, yeah we are going to take a look at it, and then make a decision as to whether it makes sense for us here in Arizona, in whole or in part.
We are already have been doing a variety of things via telecommuting and other ways to cut down on transportation, gas prices and all the rest. Some of our best workers are also parents, they’d like to be able to stay nearer their homes.
Obama over Clinton
Bennett: Governor, turning to a political question for you: I’m wondering why you decided to support Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton? And I guess I should have prefaced my question by saying that I’m sure in the course of your career you probably ran into some glass ceilings because you’re a woman. This was the first time in your lifetime, and mine, of course, to possibly elect a woman president. Was that a factor in your decision, that Hillary Clinton is a woman? Did you take flak for not picking Hillary Clinton and deciding to take Obama over Clinton?
Napolitano: Obviously, I have the utmost respect for Sen. Clinton. I have the utmost respect for Sen. Obama, and quite frankly, I know Sen. Obama better. I have a closer relationship with him. People assume that because I was the U.S. attorney under President Clinton that I had a very close relationship with the Clintons, and really that was not an accurate presumption. I know them very well and respect Hillary, like I said, quite a bit.
I know Sen. Obama very well and thought from the get-go that there was something going on in this country that we needed to really look at this election as the first election of this century and we needed to be charting some new courses and getting away from some of the old arguments that have plagued us through the 1990s. And so I thought about that. And then in terms of the gender issue, she was very up-front at the beginning of the campaign that she was not running on the gender card and he said he wasn’t running on the race card. So I said I’m going to take both of them at their word, that will cancel each other out, and I just went with the person I thought would be the stronger candidate and would be a great president of the United States, and so I endorsed Sen. Obama pretty early.
Bennett: Well, based on what you’ve said here then, does that mean that you don’t feel Hillary Clinton would make the best vice presidential choice for Obama as well?
Napolitano: I think that she’d make an excellent vice presidential choice, but that’s a choice up to Sen. Obama, and the Democratic bench is a deep one. He has lots of options there, and I’m going to be very comfortable with however he goes with that.
Ken Starr
Conover: Governor, we have talked a number of times about the ELL case. The Flores case now looks like it could be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. At least, Superintendent Horne would like that. The state House is interested in hiring Ken Starr to represent Arizona. I believe his rate is $900 an hour. Is that who the state of Arizona needs to represent it in front of the U.S. Supreme Court?
Napolitano: Well, it’s not the state of Arizona. This is the legislative leadership of the Republican House that wants to hire Ken Starr. So let’s be very careful about what we’re talking about.
On the state taxpayers’ dole, I don’t think anyone should be getting $900-plus an hour. What the Department of Administration said is, if you want to hire him, and he will work for the highest rate we will pay any outside counsel, it’s 300 and something dollars an hour—which is a lot of money—a lot more than I ever got paid as the attorney general of Arizona, then go for it. So they have that authority, and if he wants to enter into a contract with the legislative leadership and Superintendent Horne for that, then that’s fine.
My real problem there is that we should be getting out of court. You know, the money should be going into the classroom and into real models for English Language instruction that are really effective, so that these young kids learn to read, write and speak in English as soon as possible.
Border security
Bennett: Governor, are you concerned with what’s going to happen with security once some of the National Guard troops from Operation Jump Start are taken away from the border? What do you think is going to be the solution to replace those troops? Will the Border Patrol be able to put enough agents in place to keep our border secure in the next six months to a year when a lot of these troops are going home?
Napolitano: Don’t know. So, we’re going to monitor the numbers very, very closely. I’m also submitting applications for more funding for our anti-narco-trafficking personnel and so forth at the border, and there’ll be some overlap, then, with Border Patrol efforts there. But I’m very disappointed that they, I think, prematurely terminated Jump Start. It turned out to be a good complement to what the Border Patrol was doing. And we did see a real impact in terms of numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the Arizona border.
Platform committee
Buckmaster: You’re going to be involved with the Platform Committee (at the Democratic National Convention)?
Napolitano: I’m chairing the Platform Drafting Committee and we will have two sets of hearings over the next couple of weeks, one in Cleveland, one in Pittsburgh, and, in the meantime, there are over 1,300 platform get-togethers around the United States, including 20-some-odd in Arizona.
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