Commonsense COVID Response
2020-05-20 · Guest: Jeff Hewitt (Riverside County Supervisor) · 52:00
Local Governance and Libertarianism During COVID-19
Bob Zadek interviews Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt about the importance of local governance, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss Hewitt’s history of fiscal reform in Calimesa, his successful underdog campaign for the Board of Supervisors, and the ongoing struggle for local control against state-level mandates and the CalPERS pension crisis.
Topics: Local Government, Libertarianism, COVID-19, Pension Reform, CalPERS, California Politics, Fire Department Privatization
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek: Host
- Jeff Hewitt: Riverside County Supervisor
- Caller (Lee): Listener from Sacramento
All Politics is Local [00:18]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live Libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. This show, this Sunday and always, the show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. Thank you so much for listening this Memorial Day weekend.
Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, one of the really great politicians in American history—and I use it in that context of politicians not being a pejorative; I have great respect for Tip O’Neill’s career in politics—he left behind lots of wisdom, including what probably is the byline for this morning’s show. Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” Local.
And we are reminded of this during the pandemic period that we are living through right now, hopefully on the other side of it, we will see. But the reason I make that point is because during the epidemic, the headline-grabbing politicians have not necessarily been the President—while of course the President is an expert on grabbing headlines—but so much of the attention has been focused on the governors, focused on the mayors, and focused even on local health officials. Most people didn’t even know they had local health officials. So much of the attention has been focused on the action taken by governors, mayors, and the like, because the police power, which is the broad power given of elected officials, given to government over the health, welfare, and safety of citizens—the police power primarily resides in local officials and not in Washington. It is one of the great swaths of power that were not taken from states and cities and given to Washington when the country was formed; they remained in the cities.
And of course, what could be more of a challenge to health, welfare, and safety than a pandemic crisis that we are living through? Thus, the attention on local officials. I thought it would be fascinating to learn from one of the most effective local officials what life has been like on the ground, being a local official governing real people, making everyday decisions.
From Calimesa to Riverside County [01:17]
Bob Zadek: And with that introduction, I’m happy to welcome to the show this morning Supervisor Jeff Hewitt. Jeff is a Riverside County Supervisor. He was elected first to Riverside County Board of Supervisors in 2018. He has lived his entire life in rural or semi-rural California. He has brought to local politics a Libertarian point of view, and I know you will all find it as interesting as I will to see the world during these somewhat unusual times through the prism of Jeff Hewitt. Jeff, welcome to the show this morning.
Jeff Hewitt: Hey, thank you, Bob. It’s a real pleasure to come on the show and share my experiences, certainly over the last several months, to give a bird’s-eye view of what actually goes on during these times.
Bob Zadek: Now, you were elected mayor in 2010 to the city of Calimesa—do I pronounce it right?
Jeff Hewitt: Yeah, there’s a little bit of correction on that. I was elected to the City Council in 2010.
Bob Zadek: City Council in 2010, and then became the mayor. Now, so tell us about the city that you were on the City Council of and ultimately served, I think, three terms as the mayor. Just put us—give us a perspective, because many of our listeners probably have never visited your city. And tell us a few words, what it’s like in that city and what were the challenges in being the mayor of a city of that size.
Jeff Hewitt: Okay, so Calimesa first is—it’s a lot more Mayberry than it is Manhattan. It’s 8,500 people. It’s the second smallest city in the 28 cities in Riverside County. Basically, it’s a city that was formed because the bigger city next door, Beaumont, was going to incorporate a huge new development, and the people of Calimesa said, “We want to have our own city.” So they went ahead and formed it back in 1990.
Well, we have one fire station. Our city hall has basically—it’s made out of what you’d call manufactured buildings, so to speak. We’ve never actually built a full city hall. But when I got on there, it has a $6 million annual budget and there’s 11 full-time employees that work for the city, and then we contract out some of the other services.
But I’ll tell you what, it pays $300 a month, so it is a paid position, whether you’re mayor or whether you’re one of the four other city council members. And Calimesa is—I’ve called it the Rodney Dangerfield of cities because it gets no respect from either its neighbors or, if you don’t know where the Bob’s Big Boy is on Interstate 10 that goes right through our city, then you wouldn’t know we exist. But it was a great job for eight years, for two four-year terms I was on the council. And there I actually learned a lot about being an elected official. And I would suggest to anybody else considering getting into politics and being a representative for your constituents, get started by either getting appointed to a commission, which I was in 2004 on the Planning Commission, and find out if you’re set for that, if you can stomach it. Because I’ll tell you what, you’re going to find out words—people are going to call you things that you didn’t know existed in the dictionary.
Bob Zadek: Now, here you ran—you have been a Libertarian since early in your adult life. When you ran for public office in as first for City Council and then the City Council, I guess, elected you the mayor, when you ran for City Council, the election of course, if it’s local, it was probably nonpartisan. Did you run on a platform that was Libertarian, Libertarian-ish, or did you just present yourself as Jeff Hewitt, a smart guy willing to commit time to public service? And did you get elected because you were Jeff Hewitt, because you were a Libertarian? Was being a Libertarian a plus, a minus, or did it not matter?
Jeff Hewitt: Okay, so yeah, there’s a lot of questions there and I’ll take each one. First of all, it is a nonpartisan race. So whether you’re an independent, a Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian, or a Green, those things are secondary. Now, most people will know what you are. In fact, when you’re walking around knocking on doors and trying to—when you’re campaigning, people will ask you, “Well, what are you registered as?” or “What’s your political affiliation?”
And I would generally say, “Well, first of all, this is a nonpartisan office, so each individual issue that we go over, we’ll take as each on its own merits. However, my principles—and I’ve always been a registered Libertarian—because of my Libertarian principles, and those are my guiding foundational values, is that government is there to protect our individual liberties and not try to take them away.”
Now, a lot of people want public safety and roads done by government. And that’s fine. I mean, if that’s what the majority of people want and they think they can do it well, then it’s my job as an elected to make that be done in the most efficient manner possible and give the highest quality service to them in that way. So you can still be a Libertarian and you don’t have to believe in total anarchy and get along.
So the gentleman that asked me to run in 2010 after I was on the Planning Commission—and being the chairman of the Planning Commission is probably the single best position you can be in if you’re running for a city council position—and what happened was this gentleman who was very active in the Democratic Party, he said, “Jeff, I would love if you would run. I’m not going to run next time. I think you’d make a good city councilman.” And he said, “I’ll run your campaign.” So when he did that, word got out amongst the Democrats that he was backing a Libertarian. And they’d say, “Ray, what are you doing? This is—” and Ray would say, “Jeff may be a Libertarian, but he and I work well together and he’s got great ideas. He’ll be a great city councilman.” And I’ve always said that that right there—you’ve got to get past the labels. Most people are what they are, they carry that label of a D or an R or whatever they are, because maybe their parents were or the way they’ve been brought up. And changing that is a very, very difficult thing. But you don’t have to change that letter. What you have to do is gain their trust and respect, and then they start listening to you. And again, you don’t want to take anything away from anybody. That’s very dear to them. That’s like their religion in some respects. But what I found out is being an effective elected or politician has more to do with your ability to make solid relationships with your colleagues. In fact, I could put it on a bumper sticker and say that your ability to govern is directly proportional to your ability to persuade your colleagues.
The Fire Department Battle [03:57]
Bob Zadek: You got a lot of attention while you were mayor in a little dust-up with municipal unions involving the local fire department. And you got a lot of attention at the time and you achieved great success against—in the beginning, one would have bet against you. Just tell us very briefly about that battle with local municipal unions, in this case firefighters, and what you learned from the experience.
Jeff Hewitt: Well, we had at the time—we had been, like many other cities, most other cities in Riverside County, they go ahead and they contract for their fire service through the county. And then the county of course uses Cal Fire, which is a state agency, to supply all their firefighters. And so it’s a very large—in fact, Riverside County has the—they’re the largest Cal Fire fire department in the state with 100 different stations and over 1,000 firefighters that work actively for them.
And so Calimesa had their one station and the union was forcing Riverside County Cal Fire to start having all of their engines have a staffing of three at all times. And we’d always had a staffing of two in Calimesa, and it had served us very well. But because we had such a small budget and because it was already taking up so much of the budget, that was going to add another $750,000 per year just to add that third firefighter, and it wasn’t really going to increase any safety.
So the union was pushing hard for this. And I just said, “Look, we can’t do that.” And this is where the Libertarian part comes in. This is where you just say, “We’re not going to raise taxes like so many other cities had done, either through a one-cent sales tax or a utility surcharge or something like that.” We weren’t going to do that because I couldn’t justify it. There’s so many retired people in Calimesa that are on very low Social Security income and stuff, and I couldn’t be throwing another tax on them and not deliver something that was better, especially.
So I went ahead and went all in and convinced my colleagues, against their better judgment, and got my staff on board and we pulled off really what almost every other elected around me considers a miracle. And it was a good hard fight for a year.
Bob Zadek: And what was the result? What was the result in the city?
Jeff Hewitt: The result in 2017 on January 1st at midnight in the changing of the year, Cal Fire drove their engine out with their crew and we brought our engine in, our new-minted engine that we had purchased, and our great non-union—oh, and here’s the best part: our firefighters had 401(k) defined contribution pensions, which are totally sustainable. And we had a staffing of four instead of staffing of two or three. And we’re saving a million dollars a year just in current costs on our fire department and of course you can’t even count it up what we’re going to save on pensions. But it was an amazing thing and it was a feeling of pride. We all came together, all of my colleagues on the City Council. We took on—everybody had said, “Jeff, I like what you’re trying to do, but everybody knows you can’t take on fire because they’re the heroes.” And I said, “Look, if you think it’s suicide to take on fire, then in my book, you’ve already committed suicide by not following your constituents’ concerns and giving in to a special interest.”
And so I’m not the favorite of Cal Fire, as you might know. However, I now sit on a board, one of five, that controls the largest Cal Fire fire department, and I’ve treated them with respect and everything else, but I will do whatever for my constituents because that’s who I work for.
Bob Zadek: Now, I find in your story the point that jumps out to me, and I want to just emphasize it before we move on, is that as an elected official in a small city in California, you have had a more profound per capita effect on the people you represent, the citizens, than probably any elected official, any single elected official in a county, in a state, or in a federal legislative body. And I’m saying head-to-head, the effect you have had in economic terms on the people you represent is greater than any of the representatives in the House of Representatives have had on the citizens they represent. And that speaks so much to the importance of local government. The closer the government is to the people, the more direct and profound the effect you can have on their lives. It is just almost goosebump-causing how you can in one single action help your constituents so much.
Governing Riverside County [07:23]
Bob Zadek: So then you moved on, you ran for Riverside County Board of Supervisors. Now, Riverside is just a word, but it’s an important, important county. So tell our listeners just a word about the county itself. What is Riverside County in size, in population, and in significance?
Jeff Hewitt: Well, okay, so just as small as Calimesa was for a city in California, Riverside County is big in the sense that its population is larger than 14 or 15 states in the United States. It is the fourth largest county in California and the 10th largest county in the United States. So 2.5 million people. There are 500,000 people in my district, in District 5. It has 23,000 employees and it has about a $6.6 billion annual budget.
So when I moved from the council of Calimesa to the Board of Supervisors, everything went up by three zeros—number of employees, the budget. But this is one thing that—and going back before we leave what we accomplished in Calimesa—Bob, I can’t—of course they got a good return on investment for $300 a month and saving that much money. But I have to drive this home. I’m just one person. And I’m not even all that necessarily bright. But it’s about building a team. And in politics, if you’ve got a good idea and those Libertarian values, they’re always good. They always at the end of the day, they will rise to the top. But we have to stay diligent and we’ve got to stay on the actual prize and we have to convince our colleagues to go along with us. And that was what I was most proud of is building the team, because I couldn’t have done anything by myself. And there were so many people involved in that that I’m so proud to know and call friends now. And whether they’re Libertarian or not is secondary. But that was one idea that accomplished something and that’s when you can move on to something else. Because now you know the formula for what it takes. Remember that. You don’t blow anybody off. My biggest antagonist on that who had done things to me that most people would never forgive, he became my biggest ally in creating that. And that’s what I want to drive home. Your being in public office is not to do with your ego. You always, always have to remember who you work for and as you build up momentum, you can actually get things done.
Now, going back to the other, yeah, Riverside County is really big. It takes over an hour to drive from one side of my district—my district—to the other. And there are six cities in my district. One of them has over 200,000 people, which is the second largest city in Riverside County, Moreno Valley. And we have one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, the city of Menifee, who is going to pass up 100,000 residents anytime now. Oh, by the way, while we’re on Menifee, we may very well have another Libertarian on a city council, Bob Karwin, who is—happens to be coincidentally the chairman of the Planning Commission—is running for a city council seat there in November and probably should be the favorite to win. So again, that’s the pathway that we all need to do.
But yes, now I’ll tell you a little bit more, Bob, about what a county does and why a county supervisor has so much influence over people’s lives in their county in California. Because they basically carry out almost everything that the state mandates. You know, the state and the legislature will make up all these policies and rules and different taxes and everything else that people follow. But it’s not the state that really puts it through. They have a lot of their own agencies, but the county—we have 42 different departments. Everything from entitlements, whether it be food stamps or Section 8 housing, child protective services, adult protective services, the public safety through the sheriff, the district attorney. We have our own county hospital with over 5,000 employees in it. Riverside County, like I say, could be its own entity and state just because of the size. And we have five people, myself being one of them, who have the ultimate say over just about everything in that.
Bob Zadek: And if you just think of the ratio, how many citizens are in Riverside County?
Jeff Hewitt: Two and a half million.
Bob Zadek: So you have five people—five people—who have the legislative control over two and a half million people. That is—you have on a per capita basis, you have enormous amount of power over the lives of a large number of people. And it’s direct power; you affect their lives every day. And it’s very important in the allocation of political power. And therefore, once again, as we started this show, all politics is local. The policies are made—regretfully, and we’re going to get into that after the break—at the state level, but carried out at the local level. So the state gets to decide the policies, doesn’t necessarily fund them—we’ll get into that after the break—but they then, having decided a policy, good or bad—and when we discuss the virus after the break, we will discuss both good and bad—it then is delegated to the counties to carry out those policies, good or bad.
And Jeff, it sounds very much like there are these unfunded mandates where the state says to the counties, “Here’s what you must do,” and you’re on your own to get it done. And so you are left to pick up the pieces over good and bad policy. And I want to discuss after the break what tension that creates between the state which gives the directives and the county having to be on the ground to carry it out. This is Bob Zadek, I’m speaking with Jeff Hewitt. Jeff Hewitt is a county supervisor for Riverside County, a county bigger than seven or eight of our states. Wyoming ought to be a county and Riverside ought to be a state, but that’s for a different day and a different topic. We’ll be back talking to Jeff, who is probably the most senior Libertarian elected official in the country right now, when we come back from our 30-second break. Please stay tuned, lots to follow.
The 2018 Supervisor Election [12:13]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live Libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. The show this Sunday and always, the show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. This morning we are speaking with Jeff Hewitt. Jeff is a Riverside County Supervisor. He was elected as supervisor in Riverside County in 2018. He ran and governs and votes as a Libertarian, and his experiences at the ground level, at the where the rubber hits the road, if you will, is quite instructive to all of us on how government actually works. And I don’t mean the quality; I mean the mechanics of government. Because as I mentioned before the break, politics is always local. It starts nationally, then states, then cities and counties, but the effect on the people is always local.
Now Jeff, when you ran in as Riverside County Supervisor, or for that position, in 2018, was your election competitive? And if so, were the issues you ran on, the issues you ran on, were they political in the sense that your opponents and your political affiliation mattered, or did you get elected because you had done such a wonderful job at the City Council and mayoral level?
Jeff Hewitt: When Marion Ashley, who had been four terms in the Fifth District, decided to retire—he was 83 years old and he said, “I’m going to retire, spend some more time with my wife”—I saw an opportunity where I was a mayor of one of the cities in the district and it was a nonpartisan office. In other words, when you go in on the ballot, it’s not going to say what you are, because Libertarians always have a tough time overcoming that bias. It’s just we haven’t got there yet, hopefully we will in the very near future.
However, there was a couple things about this race that were very intriguing to me. And in 2016 I’d run for the state assembly, gotten seven and a half percent as a Libertarian in a partisan race, and in 2014 in a special election for the state senate I’d gotten six and a half percent, which I was very proud of, but six and a half percent still is losing. So those were Libertarian races, I ran as a Libertarian against Republican and Democrat. This one was unique in the sense, again, it was nonpartisan, but it also was one of the few races that had no limit on individual donations. So I thought, well, I don’t have that big donor base that a lot of the established parties do, but I did have a good relationship with one wealthy Libertarian up in Sacramento, Chris Rufer, who owns Morning Star and processes a good portion of the tomatoes consumed in the United States, and a long-time Libertarian donor, one of the larger ones. And I thought, there’s a chance I can do this.
But one of the more important elements was one of my friends that I’d met being on the executive committee of the California Libertarian Party was a young man named Boomer Shannon. And Boomer had always—he’d run different cannabis legalization campaigns, he’d run some other campaigns for people running for office. And he said, “Jeff, I’ll help you,” but I thought he was too busy with other things. I started out with another campaign manager, I could see it was going nowhere. When Boomer came on, everything changed. And Boomer actually said, “Wait, you did this with your fire department?” and I talked to Steven Greenhut, who is—you know Steven Greenhut is a columnist, a very well-respected one out of Sacramento.
Bob Zadek: He was a guest on my show many years ago. Yes, I do know Steven. Thank you.
Jeff Hewitt: And so Steven actually had said, “Jeff, tell me something, I’d like to write something about your fire department.” So I—he said, “Get that into Steven right now.” I went ahead and I talked to Steven, he wrote the article, came out in the Orange County Register, all the Southern California News Group 11, and then went into Reason magazine too immediately. And I got national attention from that. He says, “Jeff, we need that as a fundraising tool.”
Well, then I was able to send that out to some donors and such, and I’ll tell you what, I was able to get enough money to all of a sudden be competitive. Now, in the entire campaign—and believe me, it was a year of my life working harder than I’ve ever done anything. I mean, I’ve dug thousands of swimming pools, so I know what hard work is. But when you want something bad enough and when it’s actually that important, again, this is a lot harder than I’ve ever worked. And Boomer Shannon did the same thing. And with his brilliance at—remember, you can’t do it yourself as a candidate. The candidate’s out there shaking hands, asking for money, and doing everything that you’ve got to be everywhere. But Boomer came up with a great, great plan.
And we ended up beating an opponent who was a former assemblyman, Republican assemblyman, who had raised $1.4 million and we beat him with a little over $500,000. Now that is—it was one of the biggest upsets ever in the county history, and it was even more—it was even more dramatic because on election night, when the first numbers came in, I was 13% down. I was devastated. I wanted it to be a close race, it looked like I was going to be just annihilated. Over the next three weeks, I slowly climbed up and actually passed him and when it was certified a month later after the election, I won by 4%. And it was something—it’s just—that’s what made my win even more. Everybody around didn’t expect me to win. And all of a sudden I was in a position and everyone was my friend. So you can imagine how satisfying that was.
But remember, getting elected you haven’t accomplished anything. And this is another thing that I want to emphasize to people. Not only number one, you can’t do it by yourself, it’s all about teamwork—build a team. And second of all, once you’re in office, you haven’t accomplished anything, now you have to start working. And that’s where you have to have a plan. And again, having Libertarian values allows you to always fall back in any time when there’s an issue, you can fall back on your Libertarian values and it becomes very, very easy.
The Pension Crisis and CalPERS [15:31]
Jeff Hewitt: But no, this was a huge undertaking, a lot of hard work, a little bit of luck, and we got in. And so now I’ve been in about a year and a half. And I ran on—the issues I ran on were number one, you were talking about the unfunded mandate, I would say the largest unfunded mandate in California are pension mandates. Those are unfunded liabilities, but they’re a mandate because the legislature’s made laws where we have guaranteed outcomes regardless of how the stock market and the investments do for the portfolios of these big—specifically CalPERS.
I’ll talk about CalPERS because Riverside County is the second largest employer after the state of CalPERS in California. So we have at this point right now a $3.5 billion unfunded liability. In other words, that’s what’s owed right now that we don’t have on the promises that we made to existing pensioners and existing employees. And that’s what I set out to conquer. That’s been, up until the COVID situation, that has been number one on my plate. I’ve been inside the Treasury back in Washington, D.C. I have a personal relationship with the CEO of CalPERS and I’m putting together a package that hopefully will guarantee most of those pensions for those that have been promised it, but I’m trying to change over to where new hires will go with either a hybrid that’s sustainable or a full defined contribution like a 401(k).
Bob Zadek: I want to get into the COVID issue as our final issue, but before I do, just very briefly, CalPERS, just so our friends out there understand, CalPERS is the state agency that basically administers the pensions and establishes the economics for the pension of all California government employees. And you are required—you being the county—are required to, in effect, hire CalPERS to run your pension system, and they just send you a bill at the end. So it’s a question of top-down control. You don’t get to design your pension plan, and it’s very difficult for counties and cities to design their own plan, so you’re just along for the ride as Sacramento sets the policy. And that’s where all the politicking goes on between the unions and the state, and they send the counties the bill. So the problem is you’re just along for the ride with no input; you just get a bill at the end. Is that a fair summary, very briefly?
Jeff Hewitt: Yeah, that’s pretty darn close. And again, without getting too much into the weeds with assumed rates and discount—you almost have to go to school and become an investment manager or whatever to understand a lot of these terms and the way it works. I will give a shout-out to one of my heroes, State Senator John Moorlach, who might be the utmost expert on this. He is a CPA and everything, and he has been working almost single-handedly to fix this. So I’ve got to get a shout-out to him because he’s amazing and he is the utmost expert on this.
However, what I’ve got is I do have that opportunity, and Riverside County has a lot of leverage, so CalPERS does listen to me when I come up and say things. Now, what’s happening in real time is as those unfunded liabilities get larger, the minimum payments get greater. We’ve already shoved off so much of this on the next couple of generations, which is morally bankrupt in itself. But as the economy—you know, we only have so much money coming in and we’ll have a lot less post-COVID—that these mandatory payments take away from our ability to hire sheriffs or send out someone with child protective services to protect a child or whatever. All these things come down and our service level pretty soon, we just—we become a pension supply agency instead of an agency that supplies public service.
Bob Zadek: And as a supervisor, you lose the power to decide how to spend your local tax dollars because it all gets sucked into the pension.
COVID-19 and the Tension with Sacramento [17:30]
Bob Zadek: Now, that brings us to the current topic is the tension that became created between Governor Newsom in California—and of course the same thing has happened in New York with Governor Cuomo, and in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania and in Michigan and in Wisconsin. So California is simply an example, not the only one. So tell us about your problems with two things: Governor Newsom’s specific approach for the entire state as opposed to county by county, and what that tells you about the need for local control versus one size fits all. Tell us about the pressure points and the tension that became created between Sacramento and Riverside County, a very important county in the state.
Jeff Hewitt: Well, so we’ve got 58 counties in the state. Alpine County has 1,200 people, L.A. County has 10 million. Obviously what fits in Alpine County has no relationship whatever to L.A. County. So you can’t come in—and that’s why the top-down approach never really works all that great.
Now, the evolution of this whole pandemic, Riverside County was very instrumental in the early days of this. Remember, it was late January, like January 29th, when there was a chartered jet that landed at March Air Reserve Base in my district in Riverside County with 195 US citizens that had been diplomatic people over in Wuhan. And it was our own public health officer, Dr. Kaiser, who was the one that put a 14-day quarantine on them, and then the federal government followed. We showed—that was dynamism. I’m really proud of what Dr. Kaiser did with that. And then of course it evolved into a pandemic, not because of that; none of those people ended up having it.
However, as it’s evolved, California Governor Newsom was one of the first ones to put a full lockdown, a shelter-in-place order. And this was there to flatten the curve. Yet, I got caught up in that too because early on, we were looking at a disease that might have the mortality rate of a SARS or a MERS and it spread like the flu. That’s the worst case. Well, as it turned out, it wasn’t. And its mortality rate is much, much lower than we originally thought. In fact, it’s going to look like it’s probably going to be pretty close to what the typical seasonal flu is.
However, as this went on, it became more and more partisan, it became more and more a political bludgeon to use one way or the other. And I started plotting all the numbers myself. I do have a degree in biology, a Bachelor of Science from San Bernardino State, and I realized, wow, this is not what people are saying it is. And so I have pivoted over there. And then the governor came out with his criteria—the most ridiculous one being we couldn’t have one death in 14 days due to COVID. And in a large county like ours, that’s impossible. And anybody should know that. So I became very upset with the governor. I said a few things publicly, I’m sure that—I didn’t use any foul language or anything, but this was putting my own citizens at risk, what was happening. The people that are supposed to have me represent them, and the governor is not a king. So I pretty much said with that kind of thinking, if he can’t figure that out himself, then we should probably go against those orders. I could not convince my colleagues to do that. And at least fortunately right now, we’re getting to this Stage 2.5 where dine-in restaurants can open if they practice social distancing, and so can retail stores. I would love to see gyms and baseball games and everything else going right now. But I am doing some things with antibody testing. Riverside County will be having the state-of-the-art by the end of June. We will have the gold standard for antibody testing, which is going to be used on so many things going forward. So we’re on the cutting edge, Riverside County. And a lot of that is because I’m pushing my colleagues and building more teams to accomplish the things that we can. I don’t get caught up in the partisanship; that’s not going to do any good for anybody. You can say “use the science”—well, guess what? The science is anything you want to pick, whatever kind of data. But I look at it very objectively and bring in everything from all sides and try to make the right decision.
Caller: Support from Sacramento [20:14]
Bob Zadek: Jeff, we have a caller on hold. I don’t know if it’s one of your constituents or not, but we’ll find out in about one second. Lee, good morning and welcome to the show.
Caller (Lee): Oh, good morning. This is Lee in Sacramento. Real fan of both of you. Jeff already mentioned Boomer Shannon, who’s an excellent team builder, but someone else named Wendy also deserves credit for being such a strong support team or member of your team. I’ll leave it to you to expand upon that.
Jeff Hewitt: Oh, boy, Lee! Thanks a lot, Lee. Thanks for your call. Yeah, Lee, thank you so much. Lee said your wife. Yeah, you know, oh gosh, I’ll tell you what, I cannot believe she’s still around with—she is, listen, you cannot, if you’re going to be into politics, you have to have a spouse that number one puts up with all the stuff you have to go through. Sometimes you’re married to that, you’re married to your campaign, you’re married to a big issue you’re working on. And I do have a phenomenal wife who is not only a Libertarian along with me, we still argue a lot, don’t worry. As you know, there’s two Libertarians in a room can never agree on anything. But we have—I’m fortunate to have that. 35 years with a woman that we have three kids together and yeah, team building, she is probably the single most important part. So thank you, Lee.
The Future of Local Control [21:11]
Bob Zadek: Now Jeff, Riverside County has found that the one size fits all obviously cannot and does not work, and you have been—you, the county, as well as you, Jeff—have been outspoken in your opposition and you have actually resisted enforcing—and your sheriff has—some of Governor Newsom’s edicts on the virus. Why is it possible—is it naive to expect that as a result of this, the counties will collectively seek to—I don’t want to get too dramatic—but declare their independence and insist on more local control over the lives of their citizens? Is it utterly naive to expect that the counties will now realize that they ought to be able to operate with more freedom than before? After all, the state is nothing other than an amalgam of 58 counties, and if the counties act in unison, they are the state. Is it naive in the closing minutes of our talk this morning to expect that kind of change to result from this experience?
Jeff Hewitt: No, I don’t think it’s naive. And I think that those changes are going to have to be made at the ballot box. You know, whether they think that any of the eight constitutional offices of the state need to be changed or if the makeup of the state assembly or the state senate need to be changed. That’s going to have to come from voters. And I’m going to tell you, in three to six months when we see the complete fallout from this—the economic fallout from this pandemic—and the real numbers come in from how many people really died or were really hurt in this, there’s going to be a day of reckoning. And I think there’s going to be a lot of politicians that are going to be very uncomfortable in the way that they bought into a tactics of fear and such. And not to mention just all the wholesale usurpation of our constitutional rights, which some people say, “Oh, don’t use that”—well, no, that is still the founding document and it’s the core of everything this country stands for.
So you’re going to see, and hopefully, and again, I carry that Libertarian flag and I’m very proud—there’s nothing—that’s—I’m more proud to be a Libertarian than anything. I mean, that’s what drives me, that’s my core. But I think I’ve made a lot of friends in both other parties and I’m saying, “Don’t be so partisan now. Let’s take each issue and work on it.” Sheriff Chad Bianco has been an amazing champion of this, but I guarantee we both disagree on a lot of other things, but we can put those things aside and work together and do the best for our constituents.
So going forward, I look forward to building more and more coalitions with other counties. I’ve got a lot of—I’m very active in CSAC, which is the state group of counties, and NACo on the national scene. And this is going to be a great opportunity for people to see what’s really important in their government and judge their governments by what they deliver. I have four colleagues. Riverside County is as diverse as you can be on our board. We have one African American, one Hispanic, we have a Jewish woman, and two white guys. And we’ve got two Democrats, two Republicans, and a Libertarian. I mean, we have a very diverse board and it came about that way organically, not because of some affirmative action program or anything. And I have a lot of respect for my colleagues. Again, we don’t always agree, but at the end of the day, if we can work as a group and better that for our constituents, then good things will happen. So no, I’m very excited about the future. We’re going to get through this and hopefully—hey, hopefully they allow takeout margaritas. I mean, there’s some things that we’ve changed. But you look for little things, but this pension crisis we’re looking back, we may even change the California rule. It’s getting so bad that it will create a change. And those things need to happen. This state is amazing. We should be in the greatest renaissance of all time with advances in not only technology, people are living longer. We’ve got everything and these next generations, despite what some people say about public schools, they’re amazing people in these next generations. So it’s up to us.
Bob Zadek: And the service you have performed, Jeff, if I may, in the closing seconds, the service you have done for us all is that you have demystified and maybe even undemonized Libertarian points of view, so that when the people you represent and the supervisors you work with see you in action and see what you want to accomplish, it makes so much sense that it makes us and our point of view more welcome at the table. And for that you have performed an invaluable public service. And all the attention you have gotten at the national level was well-deserved. So Jeff, thanks so much for all your hard work on behalf of the citizens of Riverside County, of which I am not one, and the state of which I am. Keep up the work, you’re doing a great job. Thank you so much, Jeff, and thanks to my friends out there for spending an hour with us this morning. This is Bob Zadek saying so long for now, I’ll be back again next Sunday. Thanks a lot, Jeff.
Jeff Hewitt: Thanks, Bob. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.