Let's be candid about the controversy over whether film director Rob Reiner misspent public funds by raiding the child-development program created by his last ballot initiative, Proposition 10, for cash to promote his new Preschool for All ballot initiative.
Reiner's not the only one taking advantage.
The supervisory standards set up by Proposition 10 in 1998 are scandalously lax. The program uses income from a tobacco surtax, including 50 cents per pack of cigarettes, to fund health, welfare and educational services for children up to age 5 -- things like immunization and preschool.
But it has become a feeding trough for people flogging pet projects and for outside consultants of every stripe.
Proposition 10 bestowed a total lack of accountability on the bodies it established to disburse the money -- the state Children and Families Commission (headed by Reiner until he took a leave of absence Feb. 24) and 58 county entities, known as "First5" commissions.
The initiative failed to provide guidance on rudimentary issues such as conflicts of interest, competitive bidding or how success should be measured. And each commission was given the responsibility to audit itself.
The sums involved aren't trivial. The tobacco levy has produced $4 billion to date. Of this haul, 20% goes to the state commission. The rest is apportioned to the county commissions according to each county's share of statewide live births.
For an example of how individual commissions disburse this money, let's look at Orange County, the second-largest First5 in the state (after Los Angeles), which receives about $40 million a year. Its vice chairman, the right-wing political pundit Hugh Hewitt, is Reiner's most vocal and persistent critic.
Back in 2003, the commission awarded a no-bid, $250,000 annual contract to a consulting firm called the White House Writers Group. What is this outfit, you ask? It's a Washington-based gang mostly comprising former speechwriters and staff members in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. It was proposed for the contract by Hugh Hewitt, himself a former Reagan White House staffer and a personal friend of one of its principals.
Hewitt says he recommended the firm, which is essentially a high-powered PR outfit, to help the commission rectify what had become "four years of limited success in establishing the partnerships we need [in Washington] in the national health and philanthropy communities." Whether the contract will put a single vaccine in a child's arm he doesn't say; I only know that $250,000 a year would buy a lot of vaccines.
