Walter Zelman

During a career in which he has served as a university professor, public interest group director, author, policy consultant, White House policy maker, and political candidate, SPPD senior scholar Walter Zelman has sought ways to improve government and policy-making through the use of high-quality information and research. Today, as director of the Sacramento-based USC California Policy Institute, he has the opportunity to institutionalize this process and bridge the gap between researchers and policy makers in a way that's never before been done.

Launched in February of this year, the nonpartisan institute disseminates research about health, education, governance, and other issue areas from both USC and non-USC sources. Zelman's hope is that by making relevant research available in concise and accessible formats, the institute will assist Sacramento policy makers in making better-informed decisions.

Zelman says the idea for the institute came after he led a study of how the state capitol operates--its structure, processes, and cultural milieu.

"We concluded that Sacramento doesn't need a new source of independent research," he says. "California has plenty of institutions and scholars doing studies and creating knowledge. What the state needs is a group that can collect and synthesize the existing research and deliver it in a way that is timely and useful for policy makers."

He knows of what he speaks. Zelman has worked in and around government for decades, at both the state and national levels. Fifteen years ago, he even ran for office--that of California insurance commissioner.

"During my campaign, it seemed that everyone was saying good things about me," says Zelman. "I got almost all the major media endorsements, even that of the L.A. Times."

"On the day of the election," he says with a grin, "I got nine percent of the vote."

The results told Zelman something about how government works and the role of information--or lack thereof--in shaping it.

Although he lost the election, a few months later the man who had won it--John Garamendi--asked Zelman to put together a committee on how to deal with healthcare's uninsured.

"Before then, I had known nothing about healthcare," says Zelman.

But he knew a thing or two about insurance. From 1979 to 1989 Zelman had served as the director of California Common Cause, which had focused on campaign finance reform, redistricting-"things that lead to better government," says Zelman. "Under my tenure, Common Cause moved from a good-government organization to a public interest organization."

With this change in focus, he had posed the question: what issue area in California had the least public representation and the most lobbyist representation?

"One area leaped out: insurance," he says. "At the time, there were 37 groups representing the insurance industry-mostly property and casualty insurance--and one-half of one group trying to represent a public interest."

As Zelman applied his knowledge of the insurance industry to healthcare, the same issue came to the forefront of the nation's concerns. Bill Clinton was running for president and universal access to healthcare was his top campaign issue.

"The work I did for Garamendi's commission caught the eye of Clinton, who chose me to work with Hillary Rodham Clinton and others to craft a plan for national health insurance," says Zelman.

Although the Clinton plan ultimately was rejected by Congress, Zelman learned a great deal about the nature and value of think tanks, which are an intrinsic part of Washington, D.C. politics.

"In Sacramento, there aren't any think tanks supplying information to lawmakers and there's little in the way of a major university presence," says Zelman. "It's a very partisan atmosphere and there is little bipartisan research."

After leaving the Clinton team, Zelman taught at the Harvard University School of Public Health, where he wrote two books on health policy between 1994 and 1998. From there, he returned to the west coast to head the California Association of Health Plans, which advocated for managed healthcare. In 2002, he moved to the Center for Governmental Studies, where he wrote a proposal for creating a think tank in Sacramento. That proposal became the basis for the USC California Policy Institute, which Zelman was recruited to direct.

Although the institute has much room to grow, it is already producing one- to two-page summaries of research and hosting public forums where the institute staff gathers policy makers, researchers, and media.

"It's not enough to collect data and give it to Sacramento," he says. "You have to deliver it in a way that's political. It has to be concise, timely, and address the issues directly."

He adds: "An information dissemination organization has to act like a lobbyist."

So far, several schools at USC have signed on to work with the institute. But some of the obstacles the institute has encountered have surprised Zelman.

"I've found that policy people are very open to listening to a researcher," he says. "What's sometimes been difficult is finding researchers who are interested in how their work may affect policy-making."

The goal of connecting researchers and policy makers, he says, is to get policy makers who are making policy decisions to stop and ask: What's the basis for this policy? Where's the research that supports it?

Although bringing scholarly research and intellectuals into the partisan political process is a precarious business, Zelman learned a lesson about its importance a long time ago.

"At Common Cause, I learned that, if you're advocating reform, the easiest way for the opposition to denigrate you is to call you naive," he says. "You can't let that charge stick--you need to have sophisticated people using data to make a sophisticated case for your policy."

Policy makers who take advantage of what the California Policy Institute has to offer, he hopes, will be able to do just that--and to the betterment of all Californians.