Delaine Eastin taught political science and women’s studies at the community college level for seven years before entering the corporate sphere as a strategic planner. She began her government service on the Union City Planning Commission before being elected to Union City’s City Council in 1980 where she served until she went to the legislature. She won election to the state Assembly in 1986, and voters statewide elected her State Superintendent of Public Instruction eight years later. She is now running for governor. She spoke with Institute for Local Government Executive Director Martin Gonzalez in this edited conversation.

Why are you running for governor?

Well, my core value is that the State of California needs to be focused on the future. And the future of this state is really about the future of education. We’ve disinvested in all levels of education while the cost of living has gone up. The number of low income children has skyrocketed, and the number of English learners is the highest percentage in the nation. So if you look at the characteristics of California – most expensive state, lots of disadvantaged children and families, many learning English as a second language – you would expect that we’d be in the top 10 states in per-student spending , not the bottom 10.

And so as governor you would move the state into that top 10?

I would. The constitution of the State of California says the first priority shall be the education of children. It’s the actual language: “From all state revenues there shall first be set apart the moneys to be applied by the State for support of the public school system and public institutions of higher education.” So either they ought to amend the constitution to take that out or they ought to stand up for it and make it happen.

How will your experience on the planning commission and city council affect how you govern the state and partner with cities and counties and schools and special districts?

Well, my service at the local level always influenced my work as a legislator and as superintendent. At every level, I’ve seen that partnerships improve the communities we all serve. I’d really love to foster more of it.

Let me give you an example. I was on the planning commission when Proposition 13 passed. I’d been talking with the chief of police, who happened to be a neighbor of mine. He explained to me that some of the problems we had in Union City, the daytime crime and vandalism, were really about kids that should have been in school. So if the city and the school district could cooperatively focus on truancy, the school district and the city would both benefit – despite the budget cuts forced by Prop 13.

So, after I was elected to the City Council. working cooperatively we convened the first joint meeting between the city council and the school board. We put a police officer in the high school and told him to focus on attendance. We increased attendance – and graduation rates. Our college going rates rose dramatically such that, in five years, James Logan High School became a top ten feeder school for affirmative action at UC Berkeley.

But beyond that, daytime crime in Union City dropped 33 percent. So it was a win for students, the city, and  for the school district.

As governor, then, you would encourage local governments to work together in order to realize similar benefits?

I would foster much more local cooperation. That’s the level closest to the people, and everything we can do to help them forge partnerships will benefit the entire community. I feel very strongly that we have every reason to celebrate local government and create better connections between local governments on behalf of the people we represent.

I have friends, retired teachers, who are so proud of the work they’ve done and the lives they’ve affected as teachers. I want that sense of mission that you find in a great school, in a great city Hall, a great county administration building and in a great district office: people on a mission, working to make their community better. That’s what we need to engender in our whole state. A sense of community, a sense that we are all in this together.  And by working together we can accomplish the great things California deserves.

What changes would you make at the state level?

I’m a planner. California has so much to offer, but it has to get its act together. We need to do some long-range thinking and some long-range planning. I’m focused on education because that’s what any astute person who has a long-range plan for their state and their nation has to consider. But I am also about planning in other areas: water, transportation, economic development, housing and certainly the environment.

One of the reasons there’s such a debate about the twin tunnels is that they’re not based on a well-thought-out plan. The last water plan in California was done in 1957. Let’s step back; let’s prepare a real plan about how we are going to fix California water for the long term. It means we’ve got to know how many people we’re adding to the population, and where they’re going to live, and what kind of agriculture we are going to have, and how we’re going to preserve and enhance our water supply, and protect it.

Transportation? The first county to pass a half-cent sales tax to fix its roads was Santa Clara. The next counties to do it were Fresno and Alameda – at the same time. The legislative district I represented included parts of Alameda and Santa Clara counties. The head of the Santa Clara Transportation Authority was Will Kempton, who later went on to be the head of Caltrans. Will called me shortly after I joined the Assembly and said, “Delaine, we have a problem. Our plans are done, and we’re about to break ground on our projects. When I showed Caltrans our timetable, they said, ‘Not so fast! We have a list of priorities, and you’ll be going to the bottom, and we’ll probably get to that project in about 12 years.’ ”

So Will came to me, and I wrote a bill that said if you are a half-cent sales tax county with a transportation plan, then Caltrans was going to have to meet your guidelines and your timetable. They had to tell you whether they could take on the project within your timetable within 60 days, or you could contract it out. It was a bipartisan bill that was signed into law by the governor.

It goes back to planning. I was a corporate planner for Pacific Telesis. I did a lot of work on their first long-range plan. It was a very eye-opening experience to work for a large corporation, and to realize they had a blueprint for success. For the future. It wasn’t just a business plan for a year, it was a strategic plan for 20 years.

For those officials and key staff at the city, county and special district levels, and the school level, what message would you want them to keep in mind as we gear up for the selection of our next governor?

My message is that local government is the most important level of government, because it is the level of government closest to the people. And they deal with the most critical issues in every individual’s life and every family’s life. Whether your water’s clean, whether your trash gets picked up; when there’s a problem that requires a police or fire response; whether we have the opportunity to manage growth even as we promote growth.

As governor, I would hope there would be a newfound sense of purpose and patriotism on the part of those who work at the local level, that you can see it as a place where you’re doing sacred work. Local government is really the most important level of government for the average Joe or Jane.

Some of the best and most important ideas come out of local government. What a good governor does is create a sense of collaboration and purpose so we have a diverse set of communities sharing and building off of one another, based on long range plans. I love all the governmental organizations you represent. You are doing the kind of collaboration that I am promoting and with a bit more encouragement from the governor, the legislature, the private sector and community based organizations I think you could do even more.