Snapshot of a Supervisor Candidate: Richard Holober

Richard Holober, a candidate for the open San Mateo County Supervisor seat, said his campaign is going well. He’s been doing a lot of phone banking and some doorbell ringing. The response from the community, he said, has been very positive. As for fundraising, he said his campaign team is doing its best.

Following is a Patch interview with Hollober about his platform, background and supporters.

What would you prioritize if you got voted in?

I have a number of long-term goals and a vision to help this county continue to be a great place to live and a place that encourages good jobs--jobs that have a future. I want to preserve our environmental heritage, housing and transportation.

But there’s a short term, urgent funding crisis. The county is grappling with a very large budget deficit. The economy is in a protracted recession that doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon. Budget shortfalls are approaching $100 million a year. How do we control costs, reduce spending and preserve vital programs that benefit hundreds of thousands of residents? I’ve come up with an outline of a plan, a qualitative approach we need to take. It starts with looking at areas where spending has been excessive, where we need to trim costs before we go across the board and slash everything. There are six points I have outlined.

First, there are some spending practices that the county probably fell into during times that were much better. I would start by looking at those. Last year, a report by an independent consulting firm on staffing levels in this county and four other Bay Area counties showed that our county has 30-50 percent more top-heavy staffing than Alameda and Contra Costa County. More supervisors. Trim back that ratio. Do it through attrition and early retirement, layoffs as a last resort. Some layoffs would be necessary, but not to reduce the frontline employees who provide services.

The second thing is reducing the excessive personal use of county-owned vehicles. There are 556 currently in use. Those aren’t sheriff patrol cars, not for motor pools. They are passenger vehicles for personal use. We need to eliminate that practice. These are different times.

The county also has some inequity in its pensions that developed over time. A manager who is making $250,000 a year puts half the percentage toward their pension as a janitor hired at the same age does. Those are subsidies we should no longer have.

On the revenue side, the San Mateo County Medical Center has about $6 million in aging, uncollected bills from people, including insurance companies. We’re not talking about indigent or uninsured residents. These are people who have insurance or who are not paying their portion of the bills. We need to collect that money. 

There’s also the $13 million a year that the county is spending in rent. Some of that is unavoidable, but we need to bring as many of the county’s functions in house to county owned facilities as we can. We can also renegotiate rent and get a better deal.

Who are your primary supporters?

I have a very broad base of support that includes 65 local elected officials in San Mateo County. That list includes a lot of educators, small-business owners, and the bulk of organized labor in terms of teachers unions. There are nurses and firefighters, and a whole lot of people in the community; the Filipino American Democratic Caucus, leaders in the Latino community, African American community, Asian American leaders, Senator Barbara Boxer and Dave Jones. I think it’s a great, broad base.

What issue do you feel most strongly about and what's your position?

The budget is by far the dilemma we will deal with first. It has to be dealt with intelligently. I believe the next most important issue is creating good jobs. San Mateo County has a good quality of of life because of its proximity to higher learning and the biotech and high tech industries.  I would work to continue to create those types of jobs through job training funding, housing in-fill close to transit, close to downtown areas because transit provides alternatives to gridlock on the highways. Also, most of the county is open space and a lot of that is unincorporated county. I will be very tough on those who want to build things that are out of proportion or not good for the environmental heritage of the county.

What's are some things most constituents don't know about you? 

There are a few things I’d like to get the message out about. I have been a statewide leader in consumer rights issues. I have been quite effective at getting better protections of people’s pay and financial privacy. I helped stop insurance companies who wanted to raise rates on motorists with perfect driving records. I’m a consumer advocate.

I am the executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, a nonprofit consumer rights organzation. We deal with issues around protecting people from rip-offs from false advertising, exorbitant rate hikes, toxic chemicals in the household and food and drug safety. That’s the kind of work I do.

What’s your background?

I have been the president of the San Mateo County Community College District for four terms. The district is the largest county agency with the exception of the county itself. It received a 20 percent cut from the State of California, but we kept our core higher education programs and job training in tact and we’re serving more students now than we were before the cuts. There were no layoffs, no furloughs and no wage or benefit cuts. That shows my record here—figuring out how to do more with less during lean times.

I was a student activist in the activist days of the ‘70s. I was a union organizer because I thought it was an effective way to address the power imbalance between people and corporations. On the policy end of the labor movement, I ran a campaign that raised the minimum wage in California. From there, I moved to the consumer rights movement, which is, for me, the same issue from a different angle; it’s protecting people’s hard-earned money. I live my life on the side of working people, on the side of rebuilding the middle class.

When my kids were young, I was asked to run for the Millbrae school board. I loved that work. It helped me understand their education. Then I went to the community college board and I’ve been doing that for 13 years. I care a lot about what is under attack in California.

Holober attended New York State public schools growing up and went to the University of Rochester for his undergraduate degree. He attended Cornell University as a graduate student for two years before moving to the West Coast 33 years ago. He currently lives in Millbrae.

For more information about him, check out his website.