Sacramento, CA — While California’s capital rings with the word "moderate," there will be no moderation when the state reaches for the wallets of its citizens. The grab has already begun, with camouflage from the media.

When the governor-elect appointed former senator Gary Hart as his education secretary, the media cheered. Hart is an independent-minded reformer and the force behind the state’s charter school legislation. But Hart’s position does not carry as much clout as State Superintendent of Public Instruction or Legislative Secretary. Both of these positions are occupied by people of a different mindset.

Little media fanfare accompanied Davis’ appointment of Rick Simpson as his Legislative Secretary, even though the post is a powerful position, serving as the governor’s chief policy negotiator with lawmakers. Simpson is currently education adviser to Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, a defender of the educational status quo and foe of the voter-approved Proposition 227. Simpson has been well prepared for that job by working as a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association (CTA), a wholly owned subsidiary of the massive, 2.2 million-member National Education Association. Previously he worked as an education adviser to ultra-liberal former Speaker and current San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

The CTA resists merit pay, educational choice, tougher standards, and reviews for teachers. The union, which spent $15 million fighting school choice in 1993, opposes a longer school year, charter schools, phonics, and other reform measures. The CTA’s favorite idea for reform is to spend more money on education, already by law the biggest expenditure in the state. As a lobbyist for the CTA, Mr. Simpson’s job was to secure ever increasing amounts of money for his clients. He will need no retraining for his new job as Legislative Secretary and already his clients are sending the
hold-up notes.

"Public-school teachers should earn six-figure salaries," said southern California teacher Brian Crosby in a recent editorial published in the Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee. Crosby didn’t say that only good teachers should earn $100,000 and more. He wants all of them to get that scale, and at the same time "stop throwing tax dollars at phonics or grants to wire schools for the internet." Nobody criticizes six-figure salaries for "other public employees," and besides, paying all teachers $100,000 is "a necessity for the future of public education."

With a school year of 180 days, teachers work less than half the calendar year. They enjoy other benefits and perks, including practical immunity from being fired. But Mr. Crosby’s extremist sentiments will be taken seriously by the new administration. The supposedly moderate Gray Davis himself just welcomed a huge salary increase he attacked last spring as "unthinkable" and pledged not to accept.

Delaine Eastin, the re-elected State Super-intendent of Public Instruction, also backs a cash-flow solution to educational problems, despite many studies showing no correlation between spending and quality. Eastin, it might be recalled, is the CTA’s candidate of choice and as an assemblywoman she opposed the state’s current charter-school law and sponsored a bill favored by the CTA that would have allowed only 50 of the schools statewide.

While media partisans of the new administration intone choruses of "moderate," the CTA and other public-sector unions will be rattling a stick in the swill bucket. All evidence suggests that the Davis administration will give them everything they want. But as even the $100,000-man Brian Crosby contends, "throwing money at a problem will not guarantee success."

— K. Lloyd Billingsley