"Their job is to produce the right information...."
From Capitol Weekly
If a bill by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, keeps moving
forward, 10 legislative offices will be hosting science Ph.D.’s by this
fall.
His AB 573 would allow these “science fellows” to be paid out of a fund managed by the California
Council on Science and Technology (CCST). Current law requires that legislative employees be
paid by the state. The Senate and Assembly Fellows
program satisfies this requirement by paying fellows
through Sacramento State University.
The goal, said CCST director Susan Hackwood, is to
provide a professional development program for the
fellows who would then benefit state policymakers with
their expertise.“The state is already so far ahead of other states in
dealing with complex scientific and technical issues,” Hackwood said. “There
was a realization that having extra feet on the
ground would be helpful.”
Many questions remain unanswered, such as how the participants
will be selected and assigned to offices. Another is
what they will actually do while they’re there. These issues are being figured out by the
program’s selection committee, which met near the San Francisco
Airport on Monday, in consultation with the Rules Committee
in each house.
“How are you going to deal with a potentialy diversity
of opinion?” asked Assembly Rules Committee chief administrative
officer Jon Waldie. “Are we going to get into a ‘my scientist is smarter than your scientist’ type issue?”
“Their job is to produce the right information,” Hackwood said. “They are not going to be lobbying for particular legislation.”
In order to help teach academics to deal with the chaotic
day-to-day world of legislative politics, the winning candidates
will go through a three week “boot camp” in September to teach them about the legislative process
and working within members’ offices. Freshman legislators go through a similar,
though shorter program upon taking office.
Some have also raised the question of why the Foundation
is spending money to put scientists into legislative
offices when the agencies on the executive side that
do science as their main focus are starving for funds.
One office under the California Environmental Protection
Agency, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment,
was targeted for elimination under Schwarzenegger’s budget plan, while others face steep cutbacks.
Hackwood said that if the program is successful, it
could be expanded later“To start with the Legislature and Executive all together
would be a huge job,” she said. “The Legislature has far fewer people who have this
kind of science and technology training.”
The nonprofit CCST was created by the Legislature two
decades ago as a 501c3 based on the same model used to create the National
Academy of Sciences. Its board includes representatives
from both state-run and private universities in California, but its
status is intended to preserve its independence.
The science fellows program is modeled after a similar
program by the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, which has been placing fellows in Congressional
offices for 35 years. The California program would be the first state
government level program of its kind, Hackwood said.
She added that several states have also been looking
at the idea, including Arizona, New York, Texas and
Washington.
The idea of the program has been brewing for at least
four years, Hackwood said. What really got it off the
ground was a $3.5 million donation last year from the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation. The San Francisco-based foundation was founded by co-founder of computer microchip maker Intel. It handed
out $134 million in donations last year alone, mainly to scientific
entities, including several California-based universities.
“The grant is intended to provide unbiased, non-partisan science and technology expertise for policymakers,
when they want it, to be used to help in their decision-making,” said Moore Foundation spokeswoman Genny Biggs.
The San Francisco-based international construction company Bechtel gave
another $1 million. Donors including the Kingfisher Foundation,
The Heising-Simons Foundation and the TOSA Foundation have paid
in smaller amounts to bring the total fund to $6.4 million. Hackwood
said they are seeking another $900,000, which would give them the funds
to guarantee the
program for five years.
The application period for the first class ended on
May 29, with 113 applicants for 10 slots. These included a variety of disciplines, with
applicants ranging from those just out of doctoral
programs to mid-career Ph.D.’s Each would receive a stipend of $45,000 for the year.
“That’s not very much money at all for the level of education
you’re looking for,” noted Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Los Angeles, when Portantino, who chairs the Assembly
Higher Education Committee, presented the bill in the
Senate Rules Committee on June 24. She went on to say that she hoped the program would
consider racial diversity when selecting candidates.Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, raised a different set of
concerns—that he was skeptical of what “ivory tower” academics could
bring to the Legislature. He said
he would prefer to have master’s level people who had skills from the
business world,
such as competitive bidding.
“I see it as a really negative to the criterion when
you use a Ph.D. as the level you want to go for,” Aanestad said.
Nevertheless, Aanestad voted to approve the bill. On
June 3, it passed off the Assembly floor 78-0.
The Rules Committee also featured a humorous exchange
when Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, called the program a “gift.”
“The gist of the bill actually is clarifying that the
presence of these folks doesn’t constitute a gift, so they can function here in a
quasi-employee way,” replied Senate Rules executive officer Greg Schmidt.
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