Issues | Steve Harvey

Steve's Policy Positions
First, I must preface all that follows with something of a disclaimer: My own analyses are just one part of the process by which I would arrive at a vote on any topic before the state legislature: I am running to be a representative of my constituents, not an independent agent assuming that he always knows best. This involves a give-and-take, an ongoing discussion with my constituents, and an articulation of my focused and informed deliberations with the distribution and balance of views among my constituents. As your representative, I will at times lead, at times follow, and at times get out of the way. But I will always be engaged and attentive, fair and thoughtful, responsive and accessible, and dedicated to moving together as a community into a future in which our individual efforts are ever-more efficacious and our individual goals ever more attainable.
Education
Public education would benefit from improvements on three levels:

1) improving the quality and quantity of encouragement and support that students receive outside of the school,

2) improving the "student culture," such that kids encourage one another to engage in behaviors that are conducive to learning, and

3) improving the incentive structure that teachers and administrators face, so that educating kids replaces avoiding problems as their top priority.

These can be addressed by

a) reconceptualizing schools as centers from which the educational mission is pursued rather than as locations and hours to which the educational mission is simply relegated,

b) creating opportunities and incentives for parents (particularly of at-risk kids) to receive support and education regarding how most effectively to support their children's education,

c) using established programs, such as "positive behavioral support," and other innovative ideas, to give positive reinforcement to kids not just for engaging in educationally conducive behaviors, but, even more importantly, for encouraging other kids to engage in educationally conducive behaviors (I have designed an experimental program that attempts to accomplish this).

The issue of teacher and administrator incentives is more complex, and involves ensuring that teachers are selected and retained for their dedication and skill, something which is not currently always the case. No Child Left Behind, pay-for-performance, and over-reliance on standardized testing are clumsy and partial attempts to address this challenge, and, on the whole, more destructive than constructive, though improvements in their design could tilt the scales in their favor. What we really need is a more nuanced and decentralized evaluation system, measuring in-puts (how well teachers teach) more than out-puts (how well students score on overly-reductionist tests), and protections of innovative and creative teachers against the petty politics prevalent in modern school districts.

I support school choice, though I do not believe it is the panacea that some maintain it to be. I believe in freely permitting the establishment of charter schools, though, again, despite the hype, charter schools in reality have a very mixed record of achievement. And, with some reluctance, I support the right of districts to engage in local experimentation with vouchers, though voucher programs, as currently designed, are seriously flawed by allowing participating private schools to reject applicants, thus risking the creation of a huge polarization between schools with flourishing students and schools where our challenges are dumped rather than met.

The notion that creating a competitive "market" will improve the quality of education presupposes that parents making those choices will be acting on reliable information about what constitutes higher quality education. In order to facilitate such accountability, there is an increased emphasis on concrete measurements of student achievement. While probably a necessary component of a well-designed complete educational policy, this current over-emphasis on concrete measurements is problematic for a number of reasons: 1) It devalues investment in unquantifiable foundational educational experiences, such as in music and arts, though there is substantial research to indicate that such investments are very conducive to long-term educational achievement; 2) It further encourages already rampant practices such as grade inflation and overly rosy feedback from teachers and schools, since many parents rely on such grades and reports in determining how well their children are performing; 3) It skews education toward emphasizing easily measured "mechanical" skills rather than harder to measure analytical and higher cognitive skills, though the development of such analytical and higher cognitive skills is of critical importance; and 4) It places almost no value on seeds planted by inspirational teachers which might germinate years later, though the planting of such seeds may well be the most important of all educational successes.

While I do not believe that the "school choice" movement addresses the most fundamental problems with our public education system, and am concerned that this movement in some ways undermines our commitment to maintaining high quality neighborhood schools, I oppose any state or national standardization of educational policy on legitimately unresolved issues: Local experimentation is the best way to discover what does and does not work.

A more promising initiative, which I enthusiastically support and would work hard to implement, is to promote and facilitate increased community involvement in neighborhood schools, particularly the utilization of professional and retired volunteers who want to come in, give their time, and help both struggling students to succeed, and highly motivated students to pursue their interests.

Students thrive on positive attention, on the encouragement of engaged parents, charismatic teachers, and a supportive community. If we want to improve the quality of public education, we need to work hard on improving the context within which public education takes place. Nothing short of that, or which attempts to circumvent it, is likely to perform as advertised.

I believe that affordable and flexible higher education options are necessary to a well-developed and productive work force, as well as to the provision of opportunities to our young adults. Controlling tuition costs, increasing the availability of low-interest student loans, and ensuring a variety of options for students of different abilities and preferences, are necessary components to a complete education policy.

Most importantly, we need to foment a cultural paradigm shift, one in which "education" comes to be perceived as a fundamental aspect of human existence, a life-long endeavor, and the most basic tool at our disposal for improving our individual and collective existence. The greatest tragedy facing humanity today is the underutilization of the human mind, for all other tragedies could be more effectively addressed were it not for that one. And a society that cultivates an appropriately exalted appreciation of the importance of education is a society of people who not only thrive better economically, but also live richer and more meaningful lives.
Educational Issues in HD 28 and Jeffco Schools
I was very happy that our efforts to prevent the closing of Ken Caryl Middle School were successul. I spoke at the gathering of concerned parents, teachers, and community members at Ken Caryl Middle School on December 1, 2009, expressing my belief that good policies must be both holistic and far-sighted. The cyclical short-sighted reaction of building and selling schools in response to demographic ebbs and flows is far more expensive in the long run than retaining enough physical plant in each neighborhood to accommodate periods of high student enrollment, and then finding flexible, income-generating and socially beneficial uses for that physical plant during periods of low enrollment (such as serving as community college or technical school branches). More importantly, selling off schools depresses property values in the neighborhoods that had been served by those schools, reducing the revenue stream to the school district generated by property taxes, and impoverishing the neighborhood both materially and socially.

It was heart-warming, and very encouraging to me, to see so many people so passionately committed to preserving their neighborhood school. Over a thousand people crammed into the gym, filling the bleachers and folding chairs on the floor, standing along the walls and in the entrance. Community members stood up, one after the other, to speak eloquently and movingly about how much Ken Caryl Middle School meant to them and to their neighborhood. Most choked back tears as they spoke. Parents and teachers spoke of their children's enthusiasm at Ken Caryl, of how they identified with the Columbine Rebels they knew they would soon become. And it struck me how non-trivial such things are, that what our education system most needs and most lacks is just that emotional vitality which inspires our children to strive and to aspire. It's no coincidence that Ken Caryl Middle School is one of the highest performing middle schools in all of Jefferson County.

Clearly, the fiscal crisis that Jefferson County faces must be met. But it should not be met by destroying what works best educationally, and incidentally destroying whole communities in the process. In fact, it should be met by putting an end to the insistence of too many Coloradans that we continue to shirk our collective responsibilities to one another and to our children. As every economically literate and socially responsible policy maker knows, it's time to stop shrinking our state-wide financial commitment to our schools and public services, a ratcheting-down that has placed us near the bottom of the nation on numerous measures of how well we are performing. Rather than forcing ourselves into fiscally inefficient short-term reactions to what our current policies guarantee will become a continuous state of fiscal crisis, we need to invest in our state and in our communities once again. The lesson of what almost happened to Ken Caryl Middle School, and to what will happen to several other community schools in Jefferson County, should serve as a wake-up call to the people of House District 28.
Health Care
Health care reform faces three demands and one constraint:

1) it must increase accessibility,

2) it must reduce costs,

3) it must maintain or improve quality, and

4) it must be politically viable.

By a careful and thorough review of available empirical evidence, comparing those countries that utilize universal single-payer health care to the United States, it is abundantly clear that the first three demands are most effectively met by the implementation of single-payer health care. This is the solution that the vast majority of economists, and The Economist magazine, favor. Just comparing Canada and the United States, Canada's total and per capita costs are lower, coverage is universal, and the health care outcomes, by every statistical measure, are superior. But the fourth constraint makes this option currently impossible in the United States: We are still a country determined to sacrifice its citizens on the alter of blind ideology supported by vague and selective anecdotal evidence. Had we tried to pursue the best of all policy courses, the resistance to passing single-payer universal health care would have succeeded, once again, in undermining any effort at health care reform.

Given these parameters, I think that the current Senate and House bills, due, as I write, to be hammered into a single bill in joint committee, are a woefully imperfect but necessary step in the right direction: We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to pass a bill that extends affordable coverage to more people and controls long term growth in health care costs without compromising the quality of care we receive.

While, in the absence of universal single-payer health care, I strongly favored inclusion of a public option, I never considered it indispensible to meaningful health care reform: A well-regulated market can conceivably offer enormous advances along all of the above-named dimensions (cost, coverage, quality, and, of course, political viability).

The aggressive disinformation campaign we've seen throughout this process, designed to obstruct the passage of any meaningful health care reform, heavily funded by those who are profitting from the current dysfunctional and unsustainable system, is a travesty, and something against which we must fight with equally aggressive assertions of the truth. But the degree of success it has had is also a political reality with which we must cope as effectively as possible.

Though I believe we need a national health care policy, as a state legislator, my responsibility will be to vote on legislation that complements and supplements reforms enacted by Congress. One vital role for the state is to improve our integration of existing institutions, such as schools, juvenile courts, and counseling services, to provide effective mental health screening and treatment for children who need it. There is considerable evidence that this would have significant positive impacts over time on educational achievement and crime reduction, as well as being cost effective in the long run.

More generally, I believe that we need to increase attention to preventative health care and to mental health care, making these ordinary rather than extraordinary parts of our lives.
Business, Labor & Economy
As the child of a small business owner, I understand the challenges that small businesspeople face, the risks they take, the long and hard hours they put in just to keep their head above water. Many work longer hours for less compensation than do some wage or salaried workers in other enterprises. Many large businesses, as well, struggle to survive, sometimes operating for extended periods at a loss. It is essential that we put over-simplistic concepts of class conflict behind us, and consider how best to thrive as a people, all in a shared enterprise.

But the disparity of wealth and poverty in the United States, far more pronounced than that of other developed nations, with far less social mobility (despite the myth to the contrary), is neither most conducive to maximizing our national prosperity, nor the best we can do in our quest to maximize equality of opportunity for all Americans.

Organized labor in America has been an essential force in ensuring that workers are treated as human beings whose interests and dignity matter, rather than just as factors of production who exist to enrich others. I am committed to ensuring that those whose labor produces wealth benefit fairly and equitably from the wealth they have produced. In order to accomplish this, on the capital end, there needs to be a competitive return on investments, without which the jobs from which workers benefit simply dry up. The goal, therefore, is to ensure that there is a robust market economy producing competitive returns on investments, in order to create and maintain well-paying jobs and decent working conditions.

I will work tirelessly to ensure that all Coloradans have the chance to thrive by their own efforts. This requires a robust economy framed by a legal structure conducive both to the success of businesspeople, and to the ability of workers to earn living wages and live high-quality lives. An economic climate friendly to investment, entrepreneurship, and the ability of businesspeople to succeed is essential to the interests of all Americans, whether wealthy or poor, whether employees or employers. But the purpose of that economic climate is to enrich us all, not just to further enrich the wealthiest among us.

We can do better, augmenting rather than reducing individual liberty in the process, but ensuring that it is the true liberty to thrive rather than the false liberty of denied opportunity. We must strive, as a people, to make sure that we are maintaining a political economy in which people work to live rather than live to work. We must strive to make sure that all working Coloradans can achieve financial security, receive affordable health care, and enjoy a modest pension in the golden years of life, without having to endure unbearable conditions or be strangers to their children in the process. These are reasonable and achievable goals, and I am fully committed to them.
Energy, Natural Resources, and the Environment
Modern society requires large amounts of energy. This will be true even if we become far more conservation conscious, far more humble in our appetites, and far more efficient in the production and use of energy resources. In fact, developing nations, aspiring to the same life-style that we have attained, will multiply the global challenges manifold.

But such massive energy consumption produces enormous externalities. Global warming, environmental contamination, and destablizing geopolitical repurcussions are all by-products of our energy consumption. Our reliance on non-renewable resources, consuming them at a rate that will make further extraction astronomically expensive in a matter of decades, compels us to be proactive in our political and economic stance toward energy and the environment.

Environmental contamination, particularly in the forms of carbon (and "black soot") emissions, and groundwater contamination, combined with rapid economic growth in some developing nations and with an increasing scarcity of water in many regions, are global problems that cannot be ignored indefinitely. In Colorado, water scarcity coupled with population growth, and groundwater contamination through processes such as "fraccing" and uranium mining, pose urgent challenges that require assertive solutions.

Robust, system-sensitive local, state, national, and global responses are called for in response to these challenges.

A state-wide program of subsidization of research and development in the New Energy Economy is one such response. It is good for Colorado, and good for the world. We are currently forerunners in this nascent industry. Few things are predictable in world history, but the near certainty of an impending and sustained rise in the importance and value of "green" energy technologies and industries points the way toward a very important long-term economic strategy for the State of Colorado. Providing increased educational opportunities for New Energy jobs, and increased investment in New Energy technologies and nascent industries, is a wise economic and ecological course for the State of Colorado.
Civil Rights
Our commitment, as a nation, to protect the civil rights of all people affected by our policies is a sacred one. It defines us as a people. We have often fallen short, and we have just as often redeemed ourselves with impressive reforms. We believe ourselves to be a world leader, a shining example to humanity. It is incumbent upon us to live up to that self image.

The most pressing civil rights issue facing us today, I believe, is the issue of gay rights. I support, without equivocation, complete equality under the law for gays and lesbians, such that all committed couples, regardless of sexual orientation, can enjoy the same benefits and rights, and such that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is treated as the civil rights violation that it is. We Coloradans believe in personal liberty: What more fundamental liberty is there than the liberty simply to be who you are without penalty? Let's put an end to this enduring bastion of bigotry.

Our challenges do not stop there. We must strive to improve our record of tolerance, and to improve our commitment to the rights of all people. In our criminal justice system, for instance, there is a need for reforms that would both increase the rate of conviction of those guilty of crimes, and descrease the rate of wrongful conviction of those innocent of the crimes for which they've been accused. We need to implement strict policies regarding the preservation of DNA evidence, and make an effort to address some of the known factors that contribute to wrongful convictions. And we need to move away from the failed policies of mandatory sentencing and criminalization of non-predatory behaviors.
Community, Family, and Crime Prevention
I chose to group these topics together because I believe they are strongly interrelated. The strength of families depends far more on the strength of communities, and crime prevention depends far more on the strength of both, than we have been in the habit of recognizing. Indeed, strengthening our communities is more fundamental even than educational reform, since no reform is more vital to improving educational outcomes.

Though crime rates in the 1990s began to decline and level off rather than continue to escalate, as had been expected (primarily, according to one theory, due to the earlier decrease in unwanted children coming into the world), America still experiences off-the-charts levels of violent crime in comparison to other developed nations. In fact, we suffer a cocktail of problems unequaled in the rest of the developed world: Poor educational performance, poor health, high infant mortality, excessive violent crime rates, to name just a few. Add to this list of visible failures the equally high rates of less visible tragedies that occur behind closed doors day-after-day, in all socio-economic classes: the tragedies of child abuse and neglect, and domestic violence. The question we need to ask ourselves is, why?

The inevitable answer is: Extreme individualism. We are failing as a society to function as a society. Our overemphasis on the acquisition of wealth, and underemphasis on the health of our communities and families, has come at a very high cost. We are long overdue for redressing this imbalance.

We need local, state, and national grass-roots initiatives to reinvigorate our communties. I propose, and, as a resident rather than as a legislator, will help to organize, a non-partisan community initiative in House District 28, drawing on existing civic organizations and social institutions. The purpose of this initiative is to bring people closer together, on their blocks, in their subdivisions, throughout our district; to reduce the mutual anonymity of our modern society; to increase the ability of neighbors to offer moral support to one another; and to help catch kids who far too often fall through the cracks of our disintegrated society, and offer them the support and guidance they need. Those are the kids who fail to achieve in school, and fail to succeed in life. And they are the kids who, disproportionately, commit heinous acts, now or in the future.

It's time to stop merely clucking our tongues and expressing our dismay each time horrendous but preventable tragedies of violence occur, and start taking the steps that would actually have prevented them. That's what communities do.