San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, Jan. 19., 2001

Sacramento (special) -- There is the excitement of new beginnings when a term of the Legislature commences, but for legislators like Assemblyman Howard Wayne (D-San Diego) who are embarking upon what by law must be their last term, there also is a mood of deep reflection. What shall they do, what can they do, in the legislative time left to them?

California law limits legislators to three terms in any office. Wayne, a former assistant state attorney general, was elected in 1996 to his first term as the representative of the 78th Assembly District in San Diego, and reelected in 1998 to the second term. Last November, he was reelected to the third and final two-year term. Today, with only four years experience in the Legislature, he has more seniority than any other San Diegan in the state Assembly. 

In the times before term limits, third-term legislators, having learned the ropes, were just coming into their own. Now, third-term legislators wonder what kind of legacy they can leave.

Of course, some termed-out members of the Assembly will continue their political careers by running for some other office in 2002. A typical scenario is for an assemblyman to run for the state Senate, the next step up the political ladder. But this is not an option for Wayne. A fellow Democrat, state Sen. Dede Alpert, already represents the Senate district where Wayne resides, and her term doesn't expire until 2004.

That leaves the possibility of Wayne running for one of the statewide constitutional offices, such as secretary of state (now held by Republican Bill Jones who wants to run for governor in 2002), state controller or superintendent of public instruction. The latter two offices are occupied by Democrats who also have come up against the term-limit wall. Another possibility is state insurance commissioner in which a political appointee is now finishing the term of Chuck Quackenbush, who resigned under a cloud.

But as tempting as a run for a state constitutional office is, Wayne knows that as a Democrat from San Diego, he is at a double disadvantage. Candidates from Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, simply by coming from bigger media markets, start off such races better known than people from San Diego. There was a San Diego Democrat named Bert Betts who was elected as state treasurer back in the 1950s, but the only San Diegan who made it since was Republican Pete Wilson, who built statewide name identification by losing a race for governor before his subsequent election to the U.S. Senate. From the Senate, Wilson was elected as governor, and served two terms.

Whereas the city of San Diego may have a slight edge, in Democratic voters, the overall San Diego County region provides a better base for a Republican than for a Democrat. So Wayne is realistic: for him, running for statewide office would be a very long shot at best.

In Los Angeles, it is not uncommon for legislators to run for the powerful city council or the county board of supervisors, and one supposes that it's possible that a legislator might similarly run for municipal office in San Diego. 

Usually, however, the progression is in the other direction: from city council to the state legislature, as in the cases in the last election cycle of Christine Kehoe and Juan Vargas both winning election to the state Assembly.

Meanwhile, candidates already are beginning to line up for a chance to run for Wayne's Assembly seat in 2002. Among the most prominent Democratic hopeful is Vince Hall, a former aide to Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego) who went on to become an assistant to Gov. Gray Davis.

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So, here we have Howard Wayne, his career path problematical. In the two years remaining to him in the Legislature, he will serve as chairman of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee and the Select Committee on Biotechnology. 

On these two committees, Wayne has the best opportunities to shape legislation which may benefit his fellow Californians, to leave his legacy so to speak.

Representing coastal communities within San Diego, Wayne came to the Legislature concerned about the frequent outbreaks of pollution which forced closure of San Diego beaches. 

In his first term, Wayne was able to win passage for a bill which required the pollution content of ocean waters off the beaches to be constantly monitored. In his second term, he won approval for a program to analyze the sources of that pollution. 

While still continuing, preliminary analysis found that a high percentage of the pollution fouling beaches was human waste, meaning the contents of deteriorating sewers and septic lines are finding their way into storm drains that lead to the ocean.

San Diego's aging infrastructure obviously needs repair and replacement, but the city simply doesn't have sufficient money, Wayne said. Other cities up and down the California coast may have similar problems. "What may be a possibility is a statewide infrastructure bond to enable coastal communities to repair or replace the sewer lines or the septic lines so that we can avoid contamination of the coast," he told HERITAGE.

"I had heard, probably in the era that you and I were growing up (the 1950s and 1960s) that if you had a cut on your hand, you were encouraged to go into the ocean and the salt water would kill the bacteria," Wayne said. "Well now it is the reverse; you run a risk of getting a disease. The growing number of people in the coastal region and the increasing age of the infrastructure has caused that."

The Natural Resources Committee will tackle this problem during Wayne's tenure as chairman.

He also chairs the Select Committee on Biotechnology. "Select" committees tackle special subject matters that do not neatly fit into the purview of standing committees, or which are considered so knotty that they require special attention.

I asked Wayne about a proposal which Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt) has been working on in Congress to permit the reimportation to the United States of lower cost drugs. As Californians can peer across the border and see pharmaceuticals manufactured in the United States being sold for less in Mexico, so too can Vermont residents witness this phenomenon in Canada.

While perhaps tempting in the short-run, reimportation could cause some long-run problems, Wayne responded. "To put a drug through the process of research and development is about a half billion dollars, and not all drugs make it," he said. "What attracts the money (investments) is that you are going to make a substantial return. They are being sold cheaper in other countries primarily because those countries have controls on medical costs. If the effort were made to just reimport them into the country, I am not sure that the dollars would be able to support additional research--the creation of additional products.

"If the dollars aren't there, we face two questions," Wayne added. "How do we make sure that there is enough capital going into the market for research and science? And on the other hand, how do we make the drugs affordable for the people who need them? There has to be some way to achieve both goals. Because if the drugs aren't going to the people who need them, then what is the purpose of the research going on? Yet, if we can't develop the drugs, then those people are not going to be benefitted."

Another area in which Wayne has, well, a deep interest is underground water. Whereas laws covering the allocation of surface water have long been on California's books, statutory law has little to say about underground water. With increasing demands on surface water- especially in drought years--Wayne believes clear guidelines are needed to determine who has the right to mine underground aquifers.

Wayne said legislation in this field necessarily will develop over a long time frame, as research leads to recommendations and then to policy options. With only two years left in the Legislature, he knows he does not have sufficient time to develop a definitive body of law governing underground water.

What he can do, he said, is to "move the ball down the field."