Endorsement: Fiona Ma for state treasurer

State treasurer is a vital job that wants a gentle hand to steer California via good monetary instances and dangerous.

With regards to the highest duties of the workplace, incumbent Fiona Ma has achieved a high-quality job. The treasurer is the state’s banker, managing its monetary belongings, and serves on highly effective boards and committees that oversee the state worker pension techniques and award state financing for reasonably priced housing and infrastructure tasks. Ma, a Democrat who has served within the Legislature and on the Board of Equalization, is considered a hardworking, revolutionary elected official who takes severely the workplace’s tasks and alternatives.

However Ma made some troubling missteps throughout her first time period that undermine her on-the-job efficiency and will properly have invited a severe challenger to her reelection. Ma selected to proceed residing in San Francisco after being elected, but billed the state $32,000 for her and her chief deputy to remain in lodgings in Sacramento for 2 years. That’s not unlawful, however it was a questionable resolution to cost taxpayers for the price of her resolution to commute to work. Ma mentioned she now travels house to San Francisco every day.

However that follow of renting lodgings close to the Capitol led to a different scandal. Ma was hit with a sexual harassment and wrongful-termination lawsuit final yr by a former worker that stemmed from Ma sharing lodge rooms and a rental home with workers as a approach to “lower your expenses for the state.” Ma has denied the allegations and plans to combat the lawsuit.

These incidents might not be reflections of her job efficiency, however they do elevate questions on her judgment. To her credit score, Ma has made some enhancements to the state’s byzantine system of financing reasonably priced housing tasks, together with combining two businesses to make funding extra environment friendly. However it may possibly nonetheless take builders two years to navigate the assorted functions and approval for state funding, which is a waste of time, cash and energy that delays the development of much-needed reasonably priced and homeless housing.

In her first time period Ma opposed payments to overtake this damaged course of. In her second time period, she ought to break the political logjam and lead the hassle to create a one-stop store that doles out state funding in accordance with profit and wish. Ma can go away a long-lasting affect on California if she will be able to considerably scale back the paperwork that slows reasonably priced housing development.

Ma is being challenged by Cudahy Councilmember Jack Guerrero, a Republican, who additionally ran in 2018. Guerrero is an authorized public accountant who has labored within the monetary business for many years. He ran for native workplace in 2013 after a number of Cudahy officers pleaded responsible to a bribery scheme. Guerrero sought a state audit of the town’s funds and helped push for rules to stop such corruption sooner or later.

Guerrero’s priorities embrace addressing the state’s unfunded pension liabilities and advocating to part out public worker pensions, pushing for decrease taxes and smaller authorities — all of that are mainstream fiscally conservative concepts that was once debated extra typically in Sacramento earlier than Democrats gained management of state authorities.

However Guerrero additionally prompt slow-walking bond gross sales if he disagreed with legislators’ choices — which may stall necessary public investments — and he solid doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Whereas California may benefit from having a better range of concepts and political philosophies amongst state elected officers, these leaders must function in a world of info, not conspiracy theories.

Ma is the higher selection, once more, for state treasurer.