Governor Announces Actions to Support a Healthier California

Governor Announces Actions to Support a Healthier California

Thank you very much, Secretary Belshé, for the great work you're doing. And also for actually really passionately believing in all of those kind of issues, which is so helpful, because then when you say to your secretary of Health and Human Services, "I want to do another Obesity Summit," she jumps into action. I mean, she gets everyone mobilized. And, of course, this is not just important from the Department of Health and Human Services but also from the Department of Education and so many others. Community leaders and everyone have to be involved in this and the Legislature is an extremely important component and part of this whole thing, to move the agenda forward.

So I'm not going to go through all the things that we already said in there, because you already heard me say all those things. But I think the important thing here is that I like to partner -- as I've said in there -- with Democrats on this issue because, you know, I'm a Republican and it's good to sell always the idea that this is not a partisan issue at all, that Democrats and Republicans see very much alike on this. Even though in Sacramento sometimes you see a line being drawn where you see some of the conservatives talk about, "This is personal responsibility; you're personally responsible for this."

And then you have the more liberal minds saying, "Well, this is government's responsibility."

I say, "Well, let's assume all of you are right. Let's put all of this together and make it your personal responsibility, government's responsibility, the private sector's responsibility, the community's responsibility, everyone's responsibility. It's a joint responsibility, that's what it is and that's the only way we can do that."

And so I have partnered with the other party with most of those issues that I think are very important, if it's environmental issues, if it is Rebuilding America -- you know, with Governor Rendell and with Mayor Bloomberg. It's great to partner, to sell that idea that this issue has nothing to do with politics and so we do the same thing here.

Obesity, as you have heard from everybody, it's a major crisis in California; it's a major crisis nationwide. America is number one in the world when it comes to the obesity problem. Right after that is Germany and England and so on but we are the number one in the amount of body weight that we have gained, that America has gained.

The sad story, of course, is for me that in 1990, when I was the chairman of the President's Council on Fitness, they all were talking about in Washington about Education 2000 and part of that was a healthier child and a child that is ready for school, that has the breakfast, that has the exercise program already and all those kinds of things and we went totally the other direction. So we have to really turn that around and we have to work on that.

What we have done in 2005 when we had our Obesity Summit, we then afterwards, as a result of that, we passed certain legislation -- and that was what I mentioned in there -- to ban junk food from the schools, sodas from the schools, to provide healthier lunch, healthier meals and so on and so forth. And since then, of course, we did the menu labeling law and also banning trans fats from the restaurants.

And so today with this summit, I thought it would be great to look at it again, at a few pieces of legislation and make those announcements. I have the 2010 Policy Agenda that creates the foundation for California's future and attacks obesity on every level. Some of this action will require change in the state law, as I said and so I have some of the authors of those bills here with me to talk about these pieces of legislation and policy.

I'm proposing here three bills today:

* SB 1413 by Senator Mark Leno of San Francisco, who is not with us today, he's busy. But it requires school districts to make fresh, free drinking water available in food service areas. Now, you would say to yourself, "Make fresh drinking water available? Don't they have fresh drinking water in the schools?" No, 40 percent of all schools in California do not have a drinking fountain or fresh drinking water available and that's why the kids then buy the sodas, or that's why they have a tendency then to go and buy sports drinks or sugary drinks. So if we provide this water and somewhere where they can drink something, then it will be much better. So this is a law that will say to the schools, we give you to 2012 but by that time we want to have those fountains or fresh water available.

* Then there is SB 1255 by Senator Alex Padilla, who has been a terrific leader in this area and I'm so glad to be able to work with him on this. This eliminates sports drinks in public schools because up until now we eliminated the sodas but sports drinks is a loophole, so what we are trying to do now here is close that loophole. That's basically what we are trying to do. And this is by 2011. We know that these drinks are linked to weight gain and obesity. As you have heard, that 40 percent of the problems, when it comes to overweight and obesity, is created with those kind of drinks, with sugary drinks or with sodas and so on.

* Then we have AB 2705 by Assemblyman Isadore Hall of Compton. His thing is to get people exercising, to get kids exercising in the schools. So again, you're going to say, "Well, wait a minute, what is he talking about here? Because I thought we had physical education in our schools." Well, we do. But what he is saying with this law is don't just sit there when you have your physical education class but go and exercise. We want you to have exercise at least 30 minutes. And not only in the school, during the school day but also in the after school programs, so that we offer also, as a must in the after school programs, as part of that -- you're of course the leader of the after school programs right here, she's happy about that -- that we have to have after school programs that have physical education, not just the homework assistance, not just the tutoring component and not just arts but also physical exercises for 30 minutes. So this is a terrific bill, again. I want to thank both of you for being the leader on this. And we will also require that students spend at least half of their P.E. time -- that's the key thing -- of exercising, of vigorous exercising. Now, right now, as I said, that the students are not doing that and this is why we are passing this.

* We also will focus on healthy environments by making it easier for school recreational facilities to be shared by community members. And you have heard that, how important that is, that our schools -- you know, after Friday when they close the doors, they close the sports fields and their playgrounds and everything and so the community therefore cannot use it. So what we want to make sure of here with this law that we keep them open, because the taxpayer pays for the schools for 24 hours a day, so why do we lock them on Friday afternoon. Of course it's a very important issue to be discussed, who is going to take responsibility during that time, how does it work with the insurance and with lawsuits and all of those liabilities and all of those kind of things. But we're going to work on that, obviously and get this done. California needs plenty of safe places to exercise and to get moving, so this is why we are doing that.

* The other thing is finally we will expand our Governor's Fitness Challenge. That's another thing I wanted to make sure that everyone knows, because we have started out with the Fitness Challenge, with the Governor's Fitness Challenge that Jake has led, Steinfeld here, who is a great fitness leader, "Body by Jake." Anyone that wants to have a body like Jake has to go and join that particular challenge. But he is very, very aggressive the way he goes forward. I mean, he has started with 10,000, then he went to 50,000 and then to 100,000 and he moved it up to 150,000 last time. This time he said, "I'm going to get a million." And that's why we have a lot of the education leaders with us here today, because without them you couldn't do that. They are all -- you know, superintendents of their school districts and they have been working with us and they have been very enthusiastic. So I want to thank them all also for helping us with that so that we will have a million. Again, this will make us by far number one in the nation in as far as how many kids are participating in daily physical activities and in exercise programs and also in after school programs.

So with that I want to call out now Senator Padilla to talk a little bit about his legislation. Thank you very much. (Applause)

GOVERNOR: Any questions about any of this? Yes, please.

QUESTION: Any of the measures here, are they revenue neutral, or is there going to have to be any additional state spending involved to accomplish any of these things? And when you talk about the schools being a location where kids where literally cut down on obesity by getting active, are we talking about opening them up perhaps beyond Fridays, weekends? And if so, how much is that going to cost?

GOVERNOR: Yeah, you're absolutely correct. First of all, the laws that we have heard here don't cost anything. It's just what we are saying, basically, is instead of the kids in a physical education class, for instance, instead of talking for an hour about physical education, let's exercise part of that time and the rest of it talk about the importance of nutrition, the importance of, you know, eating well and watching what you eat, the amount of calories you take in versus how many you burn off and all of those kinds of things. So that's what kids learn but we want to make sure that half of this is on exercise, vigorous exercising.

The same is with after-school programs. It will not cost any extra money for the after-school programs. To have water there, that will cost money and that's why we are giving it until 2012 -- 2012, yeah. So we give it a certain amount of time so that the schools will have time to figure out how do they do that. But again, we are not saying that they should install a water fountain. Let's assume they don't have the money. We just want them to have drinking water, fresh drinking water available at the time, at the place where they eat. If they have something for breakfast in a cafeteria, have also drinking water available so they can drink. So that's what we are saying, OK?

Any other questions about this? Terrific, we explained it all. Thank you very much for being part of this. (Applause) Yeah, there's one more. There is one more, a late reaction.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) France. You mentioned being in Copenhagen and the biking path. Do you have some other examples that you can take from Europe -- where obesity is seen as an American problem -- to implement here in California?

GOVERNOR: Well, I think that every country has downsides and every country has positive sides. That's just one of them that I've seen. I think that Europe in general is making a real effort to create bicycle paths.

But also, there are many states in the United States that do the same thing. When you go to Ohio and you go to Columbus where we have the Arnold's Classic every year, I drive around with a bicycle all the time. You can go everywhere you want with a bicycle and to the next state, right along the river.

So I mean, it really depends where it is. It's just that in L.A., where we have so much traffic and where we haven't really paid as much attention to infrastructure and to building up, it has become a real challenge to get enough bike lanes available. And we all were part of the rebuilding of California and the Strategic Growth Plan but when it came down to the amount of money and you looked at that Highway 99 needed to be rebuilt and lanes added because there are so many people that get killed on this highway and it is in such bad condition, when you talk about the 405 and those things -- there was a limited amount of money they were willing to vote for, the Legislature because it got up there in the numbers, so they were concerned. So then all of a sudden the bicycle lanes fell off, you know, so that's the problem that you sometimes have.

But as long as you get the discussion going, then now we're going to go and talk to the mayor about it and with the other mayors and we'll bring everyone together and then we'll start thinking about that we have those kind of healthy policies involved. Like, you know, our Secretary, Kim Belshé, insists -- and you have heard Dr. Ross talking about it -- that no matter what decision we make, developing a new development, a new housing development, let's think about, right off the top, to build a bicycle lane there. Let's make sure that the water can be recycled. Let's make sure of all of these kinds of things, right from the top, so we don't have to go back in again later on. And let's make sure there are safe exercise places and sports fields and playgrounds and those kind of things.

In Europe, a lot of -- like I know from Austria, they really have paid a lot of attention to that and they're further along than we are. And so I think the more -- that's why I said the more we give people the chance to do that, the more we give them a chance to eat well, the more we give them a chance to exercise and to educate and all this, I think the people will come along. We just have to, you know, put the spotlight on that issue. OK? Thanks very much, everybody. Thank you. (Applause)

I guess this is one of those press conferences where we have three endings. OK.

QUESTION: Will there be a chance for youth leaders to be a part of the policy formation into the future, since a lot of what we're talking about affects them directly?

GOVERNOR: We have talked already about youth leaders being part of that. Also, remember that in California we have the big volunteer service with an extraordinary amount of people volunteering, so we want them also to become part of the action, to create leadership in their communities and start exercising kids so that there is someone there to help them. OK?

Thanks very much. Thank you. (Applause)

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