Brad Torgan was surprisingly direct and unequivocal about his positions when he spoke to the Pacific Palisades Community Council last Thursday evening. He was the last of the four candidates vying for the new 50th Assembly District seat to appear before the council. ‘I am openly a Republican,’ Torgan said, eliciting laughter. ‘If you like how Sacramento is run, then choose one of the three Democratic candidates [Richard Bloom, Betsy Butler or Torie Osborn]: they are interchangeable.’ The top two finishers in the June 5 primary will advance to the November 6 general election. Torgan graduated from Calabasas High in 1979 and then attended Duke University, where he was active in the American Israel Political Affairs Committee. He received his master’s degree in regional planning and his law degree from the University of North Carolina. In 1995, Torgan returned to Los Angeles to begin his legal practice. In 2005, he was appointed as the general counsel for the California Department of Parks and Recreation, a position he held for three years. ’My ability to work across the aisle will be important in facing the reforms that are needed in California,’ Torgan said. ‘State and local pensions are eating away at funds that should be used for education and public safety.’ Tax reform is also needed, he said, and the system needs to be restructured because the general fund ‘is too dependent on the most volatile forms of taxation’income tax and capital gains’which makes budgeting difficult. ’We spend too much in good times, creating new programs and entitlements, and then can’t pay for them when times aren’t as good,’ Torgan said. He was asked what he would do with the state’s projected $16-billion deficit. ‘The Governor’s budget relied on a capital gains tax generated by the Facebook IPO, which assumed the stock’s value would go up,’ Torgan said. ‘But it hasn’t. This is an example of the volatility of our tax structure and the folly of over reliance on capital gains as a revenue source.’ He supports Proposition 13, and rather than increasing state revenue through additional taxation, he wants to improve the business climate. Torgan has not signed Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which commits an elected official or candidate for public office ‘to oppose (and vote against/veto) any efforts to increase taxes,’ and won’t do so because he feels everything needs to be on the table. He cited the example that groceries and restaurant meals are taxed, but lawyers’ bills to clients are not, and that California is the only oil-producing state that doesn’t have an extraction tax. ’California residents have the sixth-highest tax burden in the country and the third-highest business tax burden, yet our per-pupil education spending is 48th,’ Torgan said. ‘I worry that we’re becoming two Californias. One is the very rich, the other the very poor; we’re driving out the middle class and the sector that supports the middle class.’ He was asked if he supported the proposed high-speed rail system through Central California that would then connect San Francisco and Los Angeles through existing local routes. ’As a city planner, I like it,’ he said. ‘But it has been so mismanaged and become such a boondoggle, it should be stopped.’ The initial cost of the project was forecast at $23 billion; the price tag is now put at $68.4 billion. Asked if he supported Proposition 29, which would raise the cigarette tax from 87 cents to a $1 a pack and generate an estimated $800 million a year, Torgan said no. Although supporters say that this revenue will be used to fund cancer research, smoking reduction programs and tobacco law enforcement, Torgan believes that it would ‘create a whole new bureaucracy and there are no guarantees that the money will be spent in California.’ He was also asked about Proposition 28, which reduces the total number of years a politician can serve in the California State Legislature from 14 to 12 years, but would allow legislators to spend all 12 years in the Senate or in the Assembly. ’Having been in Sacramento, I think you need time to grow in the job,’ said Torgan, who supports the initiative because ‘it does reduce the total years.’ He was asked for his thoughts on CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). ‘It works well, but it might need some tweaking,’ said Torgan, whose law practice encompasses working with property owners and community groups to help navigate California’s environmental and land-use regulations. ’The problem with the act is the misuse. For example, during CEQA hearings, when a grocery union attacks a Walmart, which employs nonunion workers, what does that have to do with the environment?’ Torgan is a former planning commissioner in West Hollywood, where he lives, and is a member of that city’s historic preservation commission. He is also a member of Congregation Kol Ami and serves as a counsel to the Southern California Ruby Football Union. He may look familiar to some Palisadians after spending fall Friday nights at Palisades High School football games because his brother Brad and sister-in-law Deborah’s son Jonah is a wide receiver at PaliHi. Jonah’s brother Alec also attends PaliHi and his sister Jenna is at Paul Revere Middle School. The Palisadian-Post has published similar front-page stories about the other three Assembly candidates. In Tuesday’s election, the two leading vote-getters will advance to the November ballot, even if one of them receives more than 50 percent of the vote.
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