Matt Mahan

low barrier alternative.

But I think that's sort of a template for, as governor, what you can do.

You have a lot of tools.

You have the bully pulpit, the ability to really shine a spotlight on issues and get people to understand why we have a given problem and how we might solve it and champion real solutions.

You have the veto.

You can kind of block

bad ideas and things that get in the way.

You drive a budget process that can reallocate budget and staff time.

And then you appoint the people who run the state agencies.

And I think often those, that may be the most powerful lever.

Often those folks feel like their job is to sit behind a desk in Sacramento and manage process and manage regulation and reduce legal risk versus actually being held accountable for delivering an outcome.

If we set a goal that every third grader

should be on grade level for reading and we actually aligned budget and staffing and made sure that the people in charge of the department of education and the county departments of education knew that that was their goal and they were going to be held accountable to it i think you would see us change how we operate and i think you'd see us move a lot closer to that goal so i think a lot of it comes down to focus and creating accountability for outcomes

I'm more concerned about opportunity.

I think wealth inequality can be very corrosive to democracy.

I don't think the wealth tax is likely, I don't support it because I don't think it'll work in practice.

That's my concern.

I'm very supportive of progressive taxation and California has the highest tax rate or second highest tax rate in the country and arguably the most progressive tax structure in the country.

So much so that the top 1% of income earners in the state

generate somewhere between 40 and 50% of the state's revenue in a given year.