What Kamala Harris Hopes We Will Forget
2020-09-04 · Guest: Quentin Kopp (Former California State Senator and Judge) · 40:29
California high-speed rail failures and political ethics
Bob Zadek welcomes Quentin Kopp to discuss the failures of California’s high-speed rail project and the early political career of Kamala Harris. Kopp details how the high-speed rail project deviated from its original promises to voters and explains why he resigned from the San Francisco Ethics Commission after it failed to properly investigate political figures like Willie Brown.
Topics: High-speed rail, Prop 1A, Kamala Harris, San Francisco Ethics Commission, Willie Brown, political ethics, California politics
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Quentin Kopp
Introduction and the High-Speed Rail Vision [00:17]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. The show this morning and always is the show of ideas, never once the show of attitude.
As an introduction to this morning’s guest, I asked Quentin Kopp, who I will introduce in a moment, to join me again on my show for a personal, indeed selfish reason. These are difficult times politically. It’s hard to see into the future. It’s really hard to keep faith in the government our founders have given us. It’s very, very difficult, and I speak from my own mind and from my own heart. And what I found myself doing in my leisure time is looking for entertainment, movies, vehicles such as that, which are positive and which replace the hope I find dwindling away based on what’s happening.
And this morning’s guest has been invited by me because Quentin Kopp’s career in government has been one, has been long, productive, replete with integrity from the first moment he took the first oath of office through and including this morning. He has been an effective judge, an effective legislator, both at the city and the state level. Everything that Quentin Kopp, this morning’s guest, has done has been independent of political influence, effective, smart, with no hidden agenda other than to do the right thing. How important it is that we remind ourselves that these public officials do exist and they will continue to exist, and they represent, in my opinion, the hope for the future of our state, our city, our national government.
This morning, I welcome back to the show Quentin Kopp. Quentin has been a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative body governing San Francisco. He was a member of the California State Senate. He was a California State Court Judge. In all positions, as I said, he served with intelligence, integrity, independence, and effectiveness. He also—and we may discuss this—just missed beating then-mayoral candidate Dianne Feinstein for the mayoral post in San Francisco in 1979.
Also, and we’ll discuss this this morning, Quentin Kopp was the principal sponsor for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Now, he was last on the show a while ago when we discussed the High-Speed Rail Authority, but not as a proponent, but what has happened to the project. And in discussing high-speed rail this morning, you will see that even myself and my listeners out there, we have a visceral reaction against high-speed rail as a boondoggle. The high-speed rail proposal that Quentin first put before the voters was one I could support, and I dare say my listeners could support. Quentin, I had to give a lengthy introduction because you deserve it and because it’s justified. So Quentin, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Quentin Kopp: I’m delighted to be here, Bob.
Bob Zadek: Now Quentin, I’d like to start the show revisiting, if you will, because it is so interesting how a policy such as high-speed rail can be presented to the voting public as one which to me made sense. I could have supported—and probably did support—it when it was on the ballot back early in the 21st century in California. But it got, dare I say, corrupted. And I’m not suggesting dishonesty, but maybe there was some of that. But tell us briefly about your thought process in—I’ll say creating, but you didn’t do it alone—High-Speed Rail Authority. What was the vision and what happened?
Quentin Kopp: High-speed rail in California, as presented to voters in November of 2008 in the form of a state general obligation bond issue in the amount of $9 billion 950 million, was supposed to be from San Francisco to Los Angeles over the San Luis Pass to Merced from Gilroy after a stop in San Jose. And from Merced all the way to Los Angeles, and then from Los Angeles to Anaheim in Orange County. That was the so-called first segment.
And thereafter, as money was available, high-speed rail would be extended from Anaheim to San Diego on the south and from Merced to Sacramento on the north. And the concept financially was the state seed money from the $9 billion 950 million general obligation bond issue approved by voters in November of 2008, as supplemented by federal funding and private investment. High-speed rail in other countries makes a profit, and that’s the rationale for a private company to invest in it. We also thought there could be some local and regional money invested, particularly in places where a high-speed rail train station would be the fulcrum for economic development that would generate income and revenue for local and regional government.
To make it short, after I retired from the San Mateo County Superior Court in 2004, I served as a State Senate appointee to the High-Speed Rail Commission. I was elected president of the commission immediately and stayed for three years to get us through the 2008 campaign to pass the bond issue. Among other things, that bond issue specified there’d be no taxpayer money used for operational expenses.
And what happened after I left that board in 2010 is that people in Atherton, in Menlo Park, in Palo Alto, and to some extent in Burlingame, California, on the San Francisco Peninsula, demanded that high-speed rail not acquire any right-of-way for itself, that it would have to use the right-of-way of the Caltrain system, which is the commuter rail system that runs from San Jose to San Francisco. High-speed rail throughout the world in Europe and Asia operates on its own right-of-way, which meant that additional right-of-way would need to be acquired. And people complained about losing properties that might be needed for a specific right-of-way for high-speed rail.
They induced their representatives in the legislature eventually to pass a bill which prohibits any further right-of-way on the San Francisco Peninsula. And then the High-Speed Rail Board, after Jerry Brown became governor, changed the plan so that the first segment wouldn’t be from San Francisco to Los Angeles, it would be from Merced to Bakersfield in the Central Valley. It wouldn’t be electrified, it would be conventional rail, diesel-operated rail. And it wouldn’t be from Merced, it would be actually from Coachella. And it wouldn’t go to Bakersfield, it would go as far as Wasco, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield in Kern County. And that is the present plan. And of that $9 billion 950 million, there’s about $5 billion or so left unspent. And the project is no longer high-speed rail as it is in Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and in France and Spain and in Germany and other countries throughout Europe and Asia. It’s conventional rail and it is squandering taxpayer money. And it should be stopped and either reformed or the remaining money in the bond issue should be used to supplement commuter rail service on the San Francisco Peninsula and in the Los Angeles Basin, dividing it between the Metrolink system and the Caltrain system.
The Corruption of High-Speed Rail [12:26]
Bob Zadek: Now Quentin, a couple of comments. What you left out, and one for which is so indicative of how you approach government, is there was a promise made—and I want to emphasize that—when voters voted for the bond issue. They weren’t voting for a boondoggle. They weren’t voting for a budget that got as high as $80 or $90 billion—yes, billion with a B. They were made a promise. The bond issue was pretty gosh-darn clear, if I’m not mistaken, that there was a commitment to voters: when you vote to spend $9 billion in borrowed money, bond money, don’t worry, voters, you weren’t opening up the trough. There was a promise that the process, the project, would not go forward, would not go forward unless there was proof that it would be cash-flow positive. And there never was that proof, but it went forward anyway. Am I correct in describing the promise made to voters? Did I describe it accurately?
Quentin Kopp: You are indeed correct. And the promise also operationally, for example, included specific speeds from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes, and likewise from Fresno to San Jose in, I think, 65 minutes.
Bob Zadek: And therefore, the proposal you sponsored contained—because that’s the way you legislate and that’s the way you govern—contained a promise, a promise, a sacred promise to voters: when you vote for this, this is what you will get, no different. And then that promise, once the bond was passed, the promise was not kept. Once the wealthy voters, homeowners south of San Francisco, once they got the bill through the legislature in Sacramento denying high-speed rail right-of-way, the project was then, at that moment that the gavel hit the wood, the project couldn’t meet its promises and therefore had to have been closed up if the promise was sincere. But it proceeded anyway.
Litigation Against the Rail Authority [15:09]
Bob Zadek: Now tell us—because this is in part, Quentin, about you—tell us, the last time you visited with us on my show, you were in the process of litigating against the very agency you helped to create. Tell us just very briefly about the litigation and what prompted you to litigate against the agency that you helped form and that you gave life to with the successful bond issue.
Quentin Kopp: The Caltrain system is governed by a board composed of three people from Santa Clara County, three from San Mateo County, and three from the City and County of San Francisco. A joint powers authority created by the legislature in the early 1990s. And that system has succeeded beyond my expectations. Before the pandemic occurred, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission researched and published the fact that the farebox recovery ratio for Caltrain, which is not an electrified system, was 73.5%, the highest in the Bay Area. And not only people from San Mateo County, but from San Francisco and Santa Clara County had increased ridership on Caltrain.
Caltrain should be electrified, and it has obtained money to electrify with an estimated cost of almost $2.5 billion. And that means from San Jose to San Francisco. What happened was two years ago, a San Mateo County legislator introduced a bill which, contrary to law, used about $775 million from the high-speed rail general obligation bond issue of November 2008 to reach that goal of raising $2.5 billion to electrify Caltrain.
We filed—we being about eight or nine other people—filed suit in Sacramento Superior Court to abnegate that action on the grounds it was illegal and violated the provisions of that general obligation bond, which was Proposition 1A in November 2008. We lost in the Sacramento County Superior Court. The case is on appeal in the California Court of Appeal for the Third District, which is in Sacramento, and the oral argument will be later in 2020. And it is a sorry state of affairs when the legislature disregards the law, disregards a promise made to voters and taxpayers as to how the proceeds of that $9 billion general obligation bond issue would be spent. Because Caltrain, while it has been succeeding beyond my expectation, is not high-speed rail.
Kamala Harris’s Early Career and Spending Pledges [19:23]
Bob Zadek: Now, the reason I wanted you to tell this story and the reason your life, your career in government gives me hope—and you are of course still at it—is that on this story we have shared with our listeners, you sponsored and actively and successfully promoted a bond issue that made a promise to voters. The promise, after the bond was passed, the promise was not kept. And you started suit to make sure that promise that you caused the State of California to make via the Prop 1A, that you brought litigation to force the honoring of that promise. And that action on your part, the whole story of you and high-speed rail, gives us some hope that there are public officials out there who make a promise to voters and they keep it.
Now Quentin, one of the reasons I asked you to be on the show this morning is because we have, you may have noticed, a presidential election before us. And the vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, of course had her entire career in California as Attorney General. And she campaigned as—and most of her career was kind of law and order, good government, aggressive public servant. You have had the experience, being active in government, in observing lots of the rise of her career. And you recently published a piece—it was not a hit piece, it was about government in general, but there was a fair amount devoted to Kamala Harris and publishing interesting stories that give us some insight into her career, how she got to be the presidential nominee. And it also tells us with unfortunate or inducing unfortunate cynicism about how government works under the hood. So share with us your experience with Kamala Harris as she started her career in politics and what you wrote about in your recent piece and what it tells us.
Quentin Kopp: Bob, I’ve had no personal experience with her. I’m basing my comments on the public record. She appeared as a candidate for District Attorney in San Francisco in 2003. She had previously been hired by the incumbent District Attorney, the late Terence Hallinan, as a Deputy District Attorney. And then she ran against him.
Before that, she was appointed to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board by then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in 1993. That paid her $97,000 per year while she was working as a prosecutor. The following year, he appointed her to the higher-paying California Medical Commission, which has the responsibility of regulating the practice of medicine in California.
In 2003, San Francisco law provided that if you agreed under oath, with a written statement under oath, to spend no more than $250,000 on your campaign, that promise would appear in the voter information handbook distributed to every registered voter before the election. It was an advantage to have such a promise printed in the voter information handbook. She signed the requisite written form under penalty of perjury in 2003 as part of her campaign against the person who had made her a deputy prosecutor with a salary of six figures in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.
After spending $1,150,000 on her campaign, she filed a form with the San Francisco Ethics Commission, which administered this program, stating she would not abide by the $250,000 spending limitation. Unfortunately, the voter information handbook had already been given to the printer and had been printed. It was too late to change it to take her name out as having agreed to this principled promise not to spend more than a quarter of a million on her campaign. And the violation was clear. The maximum penalty for violating that spending under oath promise was a fine of $275,000 and a prohibition against running for any public office in the City and County of San Francisco for five years. The San Francisco Ethics Commission, which is a toothless commission, assessed her $34,000 after the election in which she defeated Mr. Hallinan, who agreed to and abided by the $250,000 spending limit, and a third candidate who hadn’t agreed to it but was not relevant to this very sorry episode of a demonstration of a public official—because she was a Deputy District Attorney at the time she ran—violating her own written promise under oath. She’s a liar. And that’s the person who is the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party.
The Toothless Ethics Commission [27:10]
Bob Zadek: Now, lest our listeners, when you made that statement of a second ago, would think that you are clearly just joining the right in making accusations against Kamala Harris, it must be mentioned that you are and always have been politically independent. And that is—and that will be a segue into our next part of our conversation this morning. But you have regularly run as an independent. And as I have followed your career, when I saw the work you have done—high-speed rail being one example, there are countless others—the work you have done as a member of the Board of Supervisors and State Assembly and elsewhere, when I look at the bills you have sponsored, it would be impossible for me to predict without knowing what political label to put upon you. Because the political label is doing a good job. And the comment you just made was not spoken, I trust—I don’t mean to speak for you—as an ideologue on the right, but simply as somebody who prefers that elected officials and those in government be honest. And so I wanted to just make sure the audience understood the political underpinnings of your statement. That you have and always have—
Quentin Kopp: Let me correct one part of that. I was a registered Democrat from the time I was first eligible to vote—at that time you couldn’t vote until you were 21—until May of 1985. In May of 1985, I re-registered as an independent, and I’ve been an independent ever since. I was elected to the California State Senate in 1986 as an independent, the first one non-incumbent since 1876. And then I was the first independent in the State Senate to be ever re-elected as an independent, and that was in 1990 and the last time I was re-elected in 1994.
Bob Zadek: Thank you for that correction, and I appreciate that. And I just always knew you as an independent, and obviously I wasn’t looking over your shoulder when you signed the voter registration card, so I did not know that you had registered as a Democrat. But thank you for that.
Kamala Harris, of course, before we leave the subject of Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris has a bit of a challenge before her because she was a fairly extreme drug warrior, although now her position seems to have softened because she is so purely political—no harm in that, but just understand it for what it is. And she was quite aggressive in prosecuting then, not now, low-level drug crimes. She was—and important to our listening audience and their orientation—she strongly supported civil asset forfeiture. We have had many shows on civil asset forfeiture here at the Bob Zadek Show. We, of course, vehemently oppose civil asset forfeiture; it is policing for profit, as has often been said. And she was very protective of the police being able to take somebody’s property. Now she may have softened her position.
She also opposed even marijuana legalization; that was as recent as 2014. But now, of course, the winds of change are before us and she no doubt will adjust that position. And not so well known in her prosecutorial career is she vehemently opposed or supported keeping a convicted felon in jail after he had served 13 years and was found to be wrongly convicted. And the Exoneration Project, an organization that tries to get people who are wrongly convicted out of jail, the Exoneration Project supported his release, and she even then opposed it, even though he was serving a 27-year sentence and his crime was using a knife as a dangerous weapon. He was in prison for 13 years, and yet she opposed his exoneration. Ultimately he was released, but she was a very aggressive law and order advocate in her career. And at best, it simply shows she was opportunistic and went with the times, and now that those positions are no longer politically viable, she will just conveniently change. Not that hypocrisy—not that she has a monopoly on hypocrisy, but she certainly has no monopoly on integrity either.
Resignation Over the Willie Brown Investigation [33:01]
Bob Zadek: Now Quentin, you had mentioned earlier, in talking about Kamala Harris, you made reference to the San Francisco Ethics Commission. And it’s interesting that you did that because part of your recent biography has been you, no surprise, were asked to serve on that very same Ethics Commission. And you did serve on that Ethics Commission, and one would think you would have found a home because now you get a chance to root out unethical public officials. So there you were in, I’m imagining now and I’m making this up, what would seem to me to be your dream job: you get to get rid of the bad guys. And then you quit. You quit the dream job. What’s that all about, Quentin?
Quentin Kopp: I was appointed in the beginning of 2016 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and I filled an unexpired term of a prior appointee of the Board of Supervisors who had resigned. And then I was reappointed the following year for a full four-year term, and I resigned in 2018. I did so because I concluded the Ethics Commission was toothless. It was wasting taxpayers’ money with a budget of over $7 million a year.
What finally was the straw that broke my back was the report of an investigation of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in a transaction in which he was the lobbyist for a Chinese manufacturer of light rail cars that wanted to bid on and get an award of a San Francisco contract to supply 30-40 new light rail cars to the San Francisco Municipal Railway. And he arranged a meeting with the then-mayor, whose name was Ed Lee, for that purpose. And there were other people present: a representative of the Chinese manufacturer, Brown’s legal associate, a representative or vice president of the bank in San Francisco which would finance the transaction for the Chinese company. And he failed to sign a required form that requires you to state your name, who you represent, and the matter which you are meeting with the mayor to discuss.
And the ethics—somebody filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission, and the investigators then made a report to the Ethics Commission almost a year and a half, almost two years later, in which they concluded they shouldn’t proceed with a formal hearing against him. I asked what the investigation consisted of. And here’s what I was told: they didn’t interview Brown, they interviewed his attorney. They didn’t interview his legal associate, they interviewed that same attorney who was representing both of them. The same was true with the vice president of the financing bank. They didn’t put any interviewee under oath before interviewing, and they didn’t interview those people. They interviewed only the attorneys for those people. And the attorneys weren’t under oath, or so oath would be almost irrelevant if that’s who you’re going to interview is the attorney for somebody who might be a subject to an accusation of wrongdoing—already was the subject of such an accusation in the form of the complaint filed by somebody who had caught the absence of such information on a form required by the mayor’s office.
When I discovered that, I said it is senseless for me to try to spend time because the commission never brought any cases against anybody. There were a couple that were pending that were disposed of with settlement agreements and payment of minor fines. One candidate for mayor some years before that was fined about, oh gosh, 10% of what the maximum was after failing to provide information on donations and expenditures to and of his campaign. And he’s running now for the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco after such a violation. So it was not a good use of my time, and that’s the reason for the resignation. And since then, that’s almost two years ago, I haven’t seen a single case brought by the Ethics Commission.
Bob Zadek: So that’s $9 million a year of taxpayer money just for show, with no substance whatever. So much for ethics.
Quentin Kopp: No, there’s no substance. There are five people on the commission. Hope springs eternal. There was a recent appointment by the Board of Supervisors of Larry Bush, who has been president, one of the founders of Friends of Ethics, who is probably the most knowledgeable person in San Francisco about City Hall chicanery. And I have some optimism that he’ll be able to do something.